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Super-Toxic E. Coli Deadliest on Record – Kills 22, Infects 2,000

  • Spence Cooper
  • June 6, 2011

Super-Toxic E. Coli Deadliest on Record – Kills 22, Infects 2,000The deadliest case of E. coli on record has now killed 22 people and infected 2,000. The number of reported cases is based on hospital records, so the actual number of infections may be 10 or more times higher, said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

The strain circulating in Germany and 11 other European countries produces a toxin not usually seen in E. coli that can damage the kidneys and other organs. Germany alone has reported 520 cases of the kidney ailment.

This rare German strain of E.coli has killed more people and resulted in more cases of severe kidney damage than any outbreak in history. The biggest E. coli outbreak in the U.S. was from tainted meat at Jack in the Box fast food chain in 1993, which resulted in 41 HUS (haemolytic uraemic syndrome) cases. Four children died and hundreds became sick with the O157:H7 strain.

The European E. coli infections began surfacing in the second week of May in North Germany. According to Reuters and several other news sources, a German official said on Sunday that locally grown beansprouts may be the cause of the deadly E.coli outbreak

As people died and became inflected with E. coli in May, European countries engaged in a pointless display of childish recriminations — Germany blamed Spain; and Spain blamed the Dutch, as cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce, and aubergines were all under suspicion.

The European Commission even denounced Russia for placing a ban on the import of raw vegetables from EU nations over the deadly E.coli outbreak that eventually spread to 12 EU countries.

Many people infected have developed haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS), a potentially deadly complication attacking the kidneys. Reuters notes the rare strain of E.coli has the ability to stick to intestinal walls where it pumps out toxins, sometimes causing severe bloody diarrhoea and kidney problems.

Four people in the U.S. were inflected by the food poisoning outbreak in Europe. Two women and a man were hospitalized with kidney failure, and all four were in northern Germany in May.

New Super-Toxic E. Coli Strain

A Chinese laboratory, Beijing Genomics Institutes in Shenzhen, the world’s largest DNA sequencing center, sequenced the genes of the bacteria and found it to be a mutated strain that was unlike any previously identified. The lab’s preliminary analysis shows the current infection is caused by an entirely new “super-toxic E. coli strain”.

Chinese scientists said they found genes in the newly identified 0104 strain of E. Coli bacteria that gave it resistance to eight classes of antibiotics including sulfonamide, cephalothin, penicillin and streptomycin.

“The strain is a new hybrid of two nasty E. coli strains that has gained a few tricks to cause more severe disease,”said Brendan W. Wren, head of the pathogen molecular biology department at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. “It is not uncommon for bacteria such as E. coli to mutate and evolve, because they multiply every 30 minutes and therefore have numerous chances to mutate”

Officials are speculating that the resistance to antibiotics suggests this E. coli strain may have originated in a geographic region with high levels of antibiotic use in farm animals.

Health activists and responsible medical experts have warned for years that the unrestricted and indiscriminate use of antibiotics in healthy animals to promote faster growth poses a serious public health threat. The overuse of antibiotics has now created new super-strains of resistant bacteria.

6 Dangerous E. Coli Strains Still Unregulated in U.S.

At least six dangerous strains of E. coli found to cause illness in the United States have yet to ban by US food regulators.

According to NYTimes writer William Neuman, in January, the United States Department of Agriculture drafted a proposal to regulate six forms of toxic E. coli in meat, in addition to the most common form, O157:H7, already regulated, (only because of the Jack in the Box incident).

But the proposal is gathering dust at the federal Office of Management and Budget because of food industry opposition, which once again demonstrates that the federal agencies assigned to protect the public are essentially employees of the food companies they are suppose to be regulating.

Neuman claims the form of E. coli in the European outbreak is not regulated by the USDA because that strain has never been identified as a cause of illness in the United States.

In addition to the most common form of E. coli (O157:H7) already regulated, U.S. public health officials have identified six more that most frequently cause illness which have still NOT BEEN BANNED.

Last fall, the USDA issued standards for tests to rapidly screen food for the six unbanned strains. Anita K. Kressner, vice president of a test kit maker said only a few food companies were using the kits to tests for the 6 strains. Most are waiting to see what the USDA requires, as it considers new rules.

The American Meat Institute, an industry lobbying group, opposes any new USDA change that would force companies to test for the 6 new strains.

James H. Hodges, an executive vice president of the group, told food regulators additional testing would be an unnecessary burden. “We are doing the right thing by focusing on the most virulent organism [meaning O157] that has caused the most outbreaks,”he said.

In other words, the food industry considers it an unnecessary burden to protect the public from any additional rare and deadly forms of E. Coli other than the one already being tested — O157:H7.

Hodges also cautioned against trying to apply lessons from outbreaks in other countries to the U.S., saying that the industry here used numerous measures to sanitize beef and kill E. coli that are not used in Europe.

The food industry has continued to claim no outbreaks of the rarer types of E. coli has been linked to beef in this country. But as Neuman notes, last year several people fell sick after eating beef contaminated with one of the six less common forms of the bacteria.

The food industry has also often pointed to evidence that illnesses associated with the lesser-known forms of E. coli have tended to be less severe, said Neuman. But the German outbreak is now one of the most severe on record.

“For the people who argued that the non-O157s are not as virulent, they€™ve just lost that argument,”said Dr. Richard Raymond, a former head of food safety for the U.S.D.A.

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