Deadly Outbreak in Germany by Escherichia coli O:104

Uncooked vegetables might be the source of an E. coli outbreak that has claimed at least three lives and may have infected 400 or more people, many of them young adult women.

Klaus Stark, group leader of gastrointestinal infections and zoonotic diseases at the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) told that E. coli O104 serotype appears to be the cause of an E. coli epidemic sweeping Germany, with at least three dead, over 400 sick including 80 cases of hemolytic uremic syndrome. The number of serious cases in such a short time period is very unusual, and the age groups affected are also atypical.

According to Dr. Alex Friedrich, chair of Medical Microbiology and Infection Control, University Hospital Groningen, the Netherlands, the serotype involved in some of the cases is E. coli O:104. Most laboratories would not be equipped to routinely screen for such a rare shiga-toxin producing E. coli.  

 News reports described victims' infections as severe, with as many as 80 developing hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), a life-threatening complication.

The RKI said more than 80 cases of haemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) had been reported in the past two weeks, a life-threatening disease caused by infection with the enterohaemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC) strain.

In the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein alone, there were some 200 suspected cases of people suffering from bloody diarrhoea, while in Lower Saxony there were 96 and in Hamburg 42

Many of those affected are being treated in hospitals, according to one report, and some have had to be placed on mechanical respirators. The epidemiological investigation has been hampered because many of the case patients have been too sick to give detailed information about what they have eaten.

Source:http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2011/05/outbreak-of-virulent-e-coli-in-germany/

Aporte: Fernando Fuentes Pinochet