tracking the source of an e. coli outbreak - boing boing
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Tracking the source ofan E. coli outbreakBy Maggie Koerth-Baker at 9:30 am Friday,Jun 10
Europe is currently in the grip of a deadly
outbreak of Escherichia coli O104:H4a
rare strain of a common bacterium. Prior to
last month, E. coli O104:H4 had only been
identified as a cause of illness in one, single
person. As of yesterday, the bacteria had
sickened thousands and killed 27.
E. coli is a gut bacteria. There are E. coli
living in your intestines right now. The good
news is that those strains aren't dangerous.
Instead, when people get sick from E. coli,it's usually the work of strains that live in the
guts of animals, especially cows. These bugs,
while as friendly to their bovine hosts as our
E. coli are to us, release chemicals that are
toxic to people. When we consume themby
getting meat juices on fresh vegetables or
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fruit, via manure sprayed on crops, or
through contaminated water suppliesthe
foreign E. coli can make us very, very sick.
And that sickness is difficult to treat. That's
because some strains, including O104:H4,
actually release more toxins when you try to
fight them with antibiotics.
The European Center for Disease Prevention
and Control has linked most of these recent
cases back to the northern part of Germany,
the victims either live there or had recently
traveled through the region. So it's
reasonable to assume that the contaminated
food either came from there, or was eaten
there. But that's the easy part. It's much,
much harder to figure out what, exactly, it
was that made people sick. Over the
weekend, authorities thought they'd
pinpointed the outbreak to a bad batch of
organic salad sprouts. But, when
preliminary tests of the sprouts turned up no
evidence of contamination, they backed off
and started pointing the finger at imported
cucumbers and tomatoes from Spain. Today,
the official opinion flip-flopped again. Directtests of the sprouts are still turning up
negative. But epidemiological studies show
that people who ate the sprouts were 9 times
more likely to become infected than those
who had not.
That's enough evidence to affect the
immediate public health responseshut
down the farm, warn people off sprouts. But
it's not necessarily going to be the final word
on where this outbreak came from.
Top image: A graph showing examples of a
bacterial growth mediums including a few
of Escherichia coli (E.coli) bacterias
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displayed in a microbiological laboratory
at the Bulgarian Food Safety Agency in
Sofia June 9, 2011. The European Union on
Wednesday upped compensation to 210
million euros from 150 million for farmers
hit by plummeting sales, after Germany
irst blamed cucumbers from Spain and
other salad vegetables, and then German
bean sprouts. (REUTERS/Stoyan Nenov)
In fact, outbreaks of food-borne illness, in
general, are tricky to pin down. Just think
about the way you eatlots of different
foods, from different stores, coming from
different places ... even different countries.
You don't know where it came from. And
you probably don't even have the best recall
of what you specifically did and didn't eat
over the course of the past week. That's
important,because investigations of
food-borne illness start with interviews.
Epidemiologists compare the foods that sick
people reported eating and compare them to
the ones that healthy people ate. Any dish
that shows up more frequently among the
sick becomes a suspect. But then scientistsstill have to narrow down the ingredients.
It's a slow investigation, and an imperfect
one that, by its nature, can only happen long
after the trails of evidence start to become
fuzzy. The United States Centers for Disease
Control explains how scientists can be
mislead:
Some might think that the
best investigation method
would be just to culture all
the leftover foods in the
kitchen, and conclude that
the one that is positive is
the one that caused the
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outbreak. The trouble is
that this can be misleading,
because it happens after the
fact. What if the
Hollandaise sauce is all
gone, but the spoon that
was in the sauce got placed
in potato salad that was not
served at the function?
Now, cultures of the potato
salad yield a pathogen, and
the unwary tester might call
that the source of the
outbreak, even though the
potato salad had nothing to
do with it. This means that
laboratory testing without
epidemiologic investigation
can lead to the wrong
conclusion.
As a result, it's not particularly unusual for
investigations of food-borne illness to get
the culprit wrong, or point to a couple of
possible culprits and then later narrow it
down after the outbreak has ended. It's alsonot surprising to statistically pinpoint a
veggie villain that never actually tests
positive for E. coli. In 2006, for instance, an
American E. coli outbreak was traced to
Taco Bell, but the specific vegetable involved
was at first misidentified. The statistical
investigation pointed to green onions, then
later to shredded lettuce. But no food
samples ever turned up positive for the
strain of E. coli that made people sick. That's
because the entire supplyeven the entire
supply from the same supplierdoesn't have
to be contaminated for people to get sick.
And scientists can't test every single green
onion or, in this case, every single sprout.
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This week, Reuters sent photographers into
labs across Europe to see how that sampling
and testing is done. In this series of
photographs, you can follow along as whole
sprouts are turned into liquified samples,
and the samples are tested to see whether E.
coli is present. The shots don't all come from
the same places, but this will give you a good
idea of what the process looks like. (All
caption text by Reuters, not me.)
An Austrian scientist selects cress sprouts in
the microbiological laboratory of the The
Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety
(AGES) in Vienna June 9 , 2011. The
German government has been criticised at
home and around Europe for failing so far to
pin down the cause of the E.coli outbreak
that has killed 27 and stricken more than
2,700 people in 12 countries. All cases have
been traced back to near Hamburg in
northern Germany. (REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger)
Cress sprouts suspended in a culture
medium are pictured in the microbiological
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laboratory of the The Austrian Agency for
Health and Food Safety (AGES) in Vienna
June 9 , 2011. (REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger)
Cress sprouts, suspended in a culture
medium, are weighed in the microbiologicallaboratory of the The Austrian Agency for
Health and Food Safety (AGES) in Vienna
June 9 , 2011.(REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger)
Specialist Oksana Krivcenko prepares food
sample to isolate the Escherichia coli (E.coli)
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bacteria strain at the Institute of Food
Safety, Animal Health and Environment in
Riga, Latvia, June 9, 2011.(REUTERS/Ints
Kalnins)
Specialist Marina Soloviecika holds
test-tubes as she works to isolate the
Escherichia coli (E.coli) bacteria strain at
the Institute of Food Safety, Animal Health
and Environment in Riga June 9,
2011.(REUTERS/Ints Kalnins)
An Austrian scientist holds a petri dish with
bacterial strains of EHEC bacteria
(enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia coli.) in
the microbiological laboratory of the TheAustrian Agency for Health and Food Safety
(AGES) in Vienna June 9 , 2011.
(REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger )
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I remember reading about a case last
year where someone (Joyce Carol
Oates husband) died from e-coli in
their lungs. I didn't know that was
possible.
Can someone explain how e-coli ends
up in the lungs, and what can be
done to prevent this?
Anonymous
"Europe is currently in the grip of a
deadly outbreak"
Erm...that's a bit strong. The
outbreak is based in one part of one
country (Northern Germany), and
whilst it's true that people have
travelled and many, many people are
affected, to suggest that it has a
whole continent in its grip is silly.
Great article, marred by sensationallead.
glimmung
chumprock
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I just loved this tweet from a few
days ago:
@danieltatarsky - In 1 week 18 die
from eating cucumbers, everyone
stops eating cucumbers. Every single
week 100,000 die from smoking. No
one stops. We're nuts.
Or, perhaps, cigarettes are 4
orders of magnitude more
satisfying than cucumbers?
emmdeeaych
You mispelt "addictive"
there.
Nelson.C
I'm a non-smoker, but
I think you're onto
something there.
Cucumbers are just
kinda good. Cigarettes
must be better.
dculberson
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I dont know, I've never
smoked a cucumber.
chumprock
[insert here
dirty joke
mentioning
cigars and
cucumbers, and
highlight the
"insert here"
part and also
the "insert here
part" part.]
JM
Well
played.
Don
Antinous / Moder
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Or,
perh
aps,
cigar
ettes
are 4orde
rs of
mag
nitu
de
mor
e
satis
fying
than
cucu
mbe
rs?
Few things in life are
as satisfying as a
skillfully wielded
cucumber.
"Every single week 100,000
die from smoking. No onestops."
Maybe because that statement
is completely factitious in
quality and quantity. Know
what? You're right that there
jphilby
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are too many chicken littles
running around.
Most of us live in artificial
environments steeped in
multiple toxins. Who knows
how they interact? Really
think you're getting the
lowdown when the regulators
keep quiet about Roundup for
decades?
Know when we knew about
radon? Know where all the
fallout is? Know the chemical
history of your locale? Didn'tthink so. We're all in that
boat. Simplistic pap doesn't
help.
"...the foreign E. coli can make us
very, very sick."
!
Kosmoid
Have you read the crackpots over at
Natural News's take on this?
Mike Adams wrote an article on how
this strain of e.coli was genetically
engineered by Big Pharma to be as
virulent and antibiotic resistent as
Unmutual
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possible, then Big Bad Pharma
sprayed them on produce trucks or
something and then ran like the
devil.
1. Genetically engineer superbug
2. Release into food supply to create
a "controlled outbreak"
3. ????
4. PROFIT
Seriously I hate that guy.
I am amazed that there has been no
suspicion of "terrorism" and no claim
of a "successful attack" by some
whacko group. I presume that an
outbreak on this scale would have
produced a much different response
in the USA.
Two things: don't eat raw veggiesunless you are really sure of their
provenance, and don't believe
everything you read.
Two apparently innocent groups of
food producers have now been
possibly irreparably harmed by news
releases which only guess at the
source of the contamination.
Perhaps I'll just go and smoke a
cigarette while I contemplate the
idiocy of much of this. But only after
I wash my hands very carefully.
boo
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Gotta love how they are not wearing
gloves while handling the plates and
cultures.
Anonymous
Over the weekend,
authorities thought
they'd pinpointed
the outbreak to a
bad batch of organic
salad sprouts. But,when preliminary
tests of the sprouts
turned up no
evidence of
contamination, they
backed off and
started pointing the
finger at imported
cucumbers andtomatoes from
Spain.
This is temporally reversed from the
actual events. The sprouts weren't
even implicated until after "the
finger" was being pointed at Spanish
cucumbers. (That is, there were
accusations being made from
Germany to Spain almost
immediately on the first onset of
cases)
Anonymous
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"Over the weekend, authorities
thought they'd pinpointed the
outbreak to a bad batch of organic
salad sprouts. But, when preliminary
tests of the sprouts turned up no
evidence of contamination, they
backed off and started pointing the
finger at imported cucumbers and
tomatoes from Spain. Today, the
official opinion flip-flopped again."
Um... what?
The Spanish cucumbers were
assumed to be the source like twoweeks ago because e. coli were found
on one.
Then it turned out that was a
different strain.
The sprout-theory has turned up a
few days ago and although the first
tests were negative, the authorities
nevertheless stuck with saying that
the sprouts were the likely causebecause that's where the evidence
was pointing. So, no offense, but
you've got that bit in there
completely wrong.
kramski
"BERLIN (AP) German vegetablesprouts caused the E. coli outbreak
that has killed 31 people and
sickened nearly 3,100, investigators
announced Friday after tracking
links to the bacteria from patients in
Kosmoid
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hospital beds to restaurants and then
farm fields.
"Reinhard Burger, president of the
Robert Koch Institute, Germany's
national disease control center, said
the pattern of the outbreak had
produced enough evidence to draw
that conclusion even though no tests
on sprouts from an organic farm in
Lower Saxony had come back
positive for the E. coli strain behind
the outbreak."
I would never buy sprouts from the
market due to outbreaks ofsalmonella that have happened in the
past. Each week I have two batches
of sprouts (broccoli, radish, mung
beans, etc.) that I grow at home, so I
know it's safe if you DIY.
People are lulled into thinking that
"organic" means a safer product.
Actually, it's industrial farming that's
the culprit. Cross-contamination and
inadequate rinsing is a set-up for
disaster.
Yeah .. Northern Germany ... my old
home area ... FINALLY in the news!!!!
caipirina
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