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

Tracking the source of an E. coli outbreak - Boing Boing http://boingboing.net/2011/06/10/tracking-the-source

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HAPPY MUTANTS

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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Showing 19

comments

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


0 of 20 Fri. 4/27/12 3:58 5


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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


1 of 20 Fri. 4/27/12 3:58 5


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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


2 of 20 Fri. 4/27/12 3:58 5


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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


3 of 20 Fri. 4/27/12 3:58 5


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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


4 of 20 Fri. 4/27/12 3:58 5


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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


5 of 20 Fri. 4/27/12 3:58 5


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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


6 of 20 Fri. 4/27/12 3:58 5


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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


7 of 20 Fri. 4/27/12 3:58 5


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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


8 of 20 Fri. 4/27/12 3:58 5


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Tracking the Source of an E. Coli Outbreak - Boing Boing