Word: colis
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Expanding the scope of their calls, the EIS team turned up the motorcyclist who had passed through town long enough for his two-glass dose of local water on Friday, June 26. In the 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...
Certainly, O157 E. coli is not an easy bug to pick up. It's not an airborne pathogen like a flu virus, and it can have an ill effect only if it's ingested. The vast majority of people who do 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...
...nurses knew immediately that even six cases meant an epidemic. They began canvassing the region to locate others who had been infected, and each time they found someone sick, they began interviewing that person, looking for a common source of infection. After a week they had 26 confirmed E. coli cases in four states, and the numbers seemed likely to grow...
...Earlier this year, the CDC took a step to eliminate such uncertainty, employing an innovative network of biotech machines called PulseNet. The hardware allows scientists to scan a bacterium and come up with a sort of genetic fingerprint unique to that cell line. Studying samples of the Wyoming E. coli as well as bugs from the surrounding states, the EIS researchers discovered that their profiles matched perfectly. The Alpine infection, it appeared, was indeed widespread...
...current O157 infection? No, the computer answered. What about venison? No. Beef jerky? No. Any relationship between contact with cattle and the appearance of the disease? Again, no. At last, Kennedy tap-tapped the commands asking the computer about a link between Alpine tap water and E. coli. The researchers leaned in as the question was processed and the numbers were tallied. After a long moment, the screen began to fill with numbers...