The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) has issued a health advisory alerting doctors and other health care providers about an outbreak of shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) cases linked to a Spartanburg-area Mexican restaurant. During the last week of April, 2012, eleven people became ill with E. coli 0157:H7 infections. The … Read more
Health officials in Kentucky are investigating an E.coli outbreak that has sickened three Kindergarteners, two of whom are hospitalized, Beth Fisher, a spokeswoman for the Kentucky Center For Health and Family Services (KCHFS) told Food Poisoning Bulletin this morning. The children attend school at Stanford Elementary school in Lincoln County, about 45 miles south of Lexington. KCHFS … Read more
Of the 19 people who have been sickened by the raw milk E.coli outbreak linked to Foundation Farm in Oregon, 15 are children, four of whom have been hospitalized with kidney failure, according to the Oregon Health Authority. The four children have hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), a condition that develops in some children after an E. … Read more
Raw milk has been the source of a number of recent foodborne illness outbreaks including two ongoing E.coli outbreaks in Missouri and Oregon that have sickened at least 18 people and hospitalized five small children with hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), which causes kidney failure. Raw, or unpasteurized, milk products account for the majority of all … Read more
The Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) is seeing an increase in cases of Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) bacteria in the last few weeks. Five cases of E. coli 0157:H7 have been confirmed according to an advisory obtained by Food Poisoning Bulletin. In two of these cases, a seventeen-month old child and … Read more
Every person in American has had food poisoning at one time or another. After all, since 1 in 6 Americans contacts a foodborne illness every year, that means, statistically, every six years you’ll get sick. And considering that most foodborne illness cases go unreported, that number is probably much higher. For most people, food poisoning … Read more
A week after a group of health scientists in Germany published findings of their success in treating toxic E. coli infections with an antibiotic, a separate study newly published says antibiotic use during E. coli O157:H7 infections is associated with a higher rate of subsequent HUS, and should be avoided. HUS, or hemolytic uremic syndrome, … Read more
The Western Upper Peninsula Health Department is investigating an E. coli O157:H7 outbreak that has sickened 7 people, 4 of whom have been hospitalized. Those sickened became ill over the Christmas holidays after eating at The Ambassador, a restaurant in Houghton, Michigan, that the health department has linked to the outbreak. Initially 3 local and … Read more
A multiagency task force is being created in North Carolina to evaluate the preventive measures that were in place during the 2011 State Fair, when at least 25 attendees were sickened with E. coli O157:H7 in an outbreak linked to human contact with animals in livestock exhibits. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) … Read more
When a dangerous strain of E. coli sickened more than 60 employees of a large company in Germany last spring, health investigators turned to the electronic billing records kept by two in-house cafeterias to accurately identify fenugreek sprouts as the cause. Details of the investigation in Frankfurt, Germany, were reported in this month’s issue of … Read more