If we were to draw up a list of places where Escherichia coli, the bacteria that's better known as E coli, can thrive, Thailand would certainly be on it.


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European investigators fitting together the puzzle pieces of devastating E. coli outbreaks in Germany and France cautiously identified a likely source on Wednesday: contaminated fenugreek seeds from Egypt.

Officials also said that the seesd seemed to have entered Europe through a single German importer, which acted as a distributor to other companies.

A report by the Europwan Food Safety Authority said that sprouts grown from fenugreek seeds imported from Egypt in 2009 and 2010 "are implicated in both outbreaks". But it added that "there is still much uncertainty about wether this is truly the commen cause of the infections" because tests on the seeds had not yet found any of the deadly E. coli, a rare train known as O104:H4. Food safety experts say, however, that the bacteria can contaminate one seed in thousands and that is very difficult to isolate in seed samples.

The German authorities concluded the outbreak was caused by contaminated sprouts produced by a grower in northern Germany. The German grower produced many different types of sprouts, often selling them in mixes, and investigators were apparently unable to definitively identify a single variety as the culprit, despite some early accounts that blamed bean sprouts.

As the German outbreak began to wane in mid-June, a fresh wave of illness involving the same E. coli strain was identified in the Bordeaux region of France.

The French authorities said many of the people who fell ill had eaten sprouts from a mix of three varieties, including fenugreek.

Public health experts in the United States said that the French outbreak, in which about 16 people fell ill, may have helped investigators in the German episodes to focus on the three varieties of sprouts, looking for commen threads. The food safety authority's report said the fenugeek seeds came into Europe from Egypt in two shipments, one in 2009 and one in 2010. The report said that seeds form the 2010 lot were sold to the German sprouter implicated in the outbreak there, while seeds from the 2009 lot went to a British company that packed them and sold them to a retailer in France.

Source: N.Y. Times

The thought is that the bacteria started out being able to aggregate with the brick pattern and then were infected with a bacterical virus that gave them the Shiga toxin, said Dr. Matthew K. Waldor, an infectious-disease expert at Harvard Medical School who was not connected with the new research.

The E. Coli bacteria that killed dozens of people in Germany over the past month have a highly unusual combination of two traits and that may be what made the outbreak among the deadliest in recent history, scientists there are reporting.

One trait was a toxin, called Shiga, that causes severe illness, including bloody diarrhea and, in some  patients, kidney failure. The other is the ability of this strain to gather on the surface of an intestinal wall in a dense pattern that looks like a stack of bricks, possibly enhancing the bacteria's ability to pump the toxin into the body.

Source: N.Y. Times

A day after German agricultural officials identified locally grown sprouts as a possible cause of the E.coli outbreak that has killed 22 people and sickened more than 2,200, the officials said Monday that initial tests had failed to show conclusively that the bacteria originated with the sprouts.

In Berlin, the Robert Koch Institute, the federal institution responsible for disease control and prevention, has continued to recommend that consumers refrain from eating salads, tomatoes and cucumbers, particularly from northern Germany. The warnings could be difficult for consumers to respond to, because they may not always know where food originates.

Source: N.Y. Times