First officially recognized as a foodborne pathogen in 1982, an E. coli O157:H7 outbreak was linked back to ground beef, leading to the nick-name “the hamburger disease”. The E. coli O157:H7 bacterium should not be held to so narrow a set of food. Typically the bacteria live in cow feces, but the E. coli O157:H7 microbe has appeared in meats, fruits, vegetables and even cookie dough. It is a little bacterium that packs a very big punch.
It may take as little as 10 E. coli O157:H7 bacteria to take a hold of your insides. For most healthy adults, this means about a week’s worth of abdominal cramping and bloody diarrhea. In the most severe cases this type of E. coli can attack blood cells leading to hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), the leading cause of acute kidney failure for children in the U.S. The disease causes blood flow to become restricted and damage the organs, usually the kidneys. Even in the best cases, long term kidney damage is common. In the worst cases, hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) proves to be fatal.
Richard J. Arsenault, 2010
