Word: bacterias
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...days since, he had developed a confirmed O157 infection. Because E. coli can be passed by touch from one person to another before it's unknowingly ingested, it was possible that he had picked up the bug from one of his friends in Alpine. But the water-bacteria link was too promising to ignore. Breuer also contacted LaFonda Scott, the woman who had organized the family reunion in Alpine. Scott reported that she and several of her relatives had tested positive for O157. Over the next few days, Breuer interviewed 41 of the 43 Scotts who had visited Alpine...
...problem indeed. Of all the bacteria that bloom in the body, E. coli is usually one of the most beneficial, helping to metabolize food in the intestine. In 1982, however, scientists discovered that E. coli wasn't always so benign. That year 26 people in Oregon were felled by a violent infection and intestinal disorder, and when doctors analyzed the bug behind the illness, they found that it was all but indistinguishable from ordinary E. coli, with but a small exception: this breed of the bacterium contained a few strands of genetic reweaving that cause it to produce a powerful...
...come down with the infection survive if they are kept hydrated and, in some cases, hospitalized. But up to 1% do die--mostly children, the elderly and people with compromised immune systems. In all cases, antibiotics are not only useless but may actually make things worse, causing the bacteria to rupture and spill their toxin even more widely throughout the gut. Says Nancy Donley, a safe-food activist whose son died of E. coli infection: "We're not talking about minor gastrointestinal distress. It is a brutally ugly death...
...around the town had been fierce enough in the early part of the year to topple fences erected to keep animals away from the springs. If even a single animal did wander in, any feces it left behind could have been washed into the water supply by spring rains. Bacteria in the feces would have moved through the Alpine pipes in a single foul rush and then drained away. "Once the E. coli hit town it was at once everywhere," Breuer says. And then, just as quickly, it was gone...
...people tested positive for the Alpine bug--19 of whom were hospitalized--and an additional 159 were suspected of being infected, making it the largest waterborne outbreak of O157 in the U.S. So far none of the Alpine victims have died; given the bacteria's low but consistent mortality rate, however, that is as much a stroke of luck as anything else...