An aggressive strain of E. coli bacteria has killed 16 people in Europe, where governments are scrambling to find the source of the outbreak.
The epicenter of the mysterious outbreak is northern Germany. But, as The Wall Street Journal reports, since initially being reported on May 22, the illness has stricken hundreds in Sweden, Denmark, France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Switzerland.
Known as enterohemorrhagic E. coli, the difficult-to-treat strain can cause bloody diarrhea and, occasionally, kidney failure. It normally is food-borne, but person-to-person transmission is possible.
The two most recent deaths were in Boras, Sweden, where a woman in her 50s died after returning from a trip to Germany, and in Paderborn, Germany, where an 87-year-old woman suffering other ailments also died, according to the Associated Press. The Swedish case marked the first death from the outbreak outside of Germany.
Germany’s national disease control center said 373 people were sick with a rare complication of the outbreak, hemolytic uremic syndrome, or HUS, considered the most serious form of the illness. That figure was up from the 329 reported Monday.
The strain of E. coli in Europe is related to the type that, in 1993, killed four children in the western United States and made 500 people ill after they ate contaminated hamburgers at a fast-food chain, Jack in the Box.
Researchers at an institute affiliated with the German health ministry believe the current outbreak stems from tainted tomatoes, lettuce or cucumbers. Authorities in Germany initially linked the bacteria to cucumbers imported from Spain, but the source remains a mystery, and authorities now are looking at cucumbers shipped from Denmark and the Netherlands as potential culprits.
In the meantime, the German government is warning consumers to avoid all cucumbers, lettuces and raw tomatoes.
