Denmark: E. coli outbreak successfully
traced through credit cards
Source of
Article: http://www.fleshandstone.net/healthandsciencenews/1501.html An outbreak of E.
coli in Danish children was traced back to beef sausages using credit card
receipts. The journal
Clinical Infectious Diseases has published a novel approach to
tracing the source of an outbreak of E. coli:
credit cards. Between February and May of 2007, officials at the Danish
Statens Serum Institut in Copenhagen identified 20 cases of shiga
toxin-producing E.
coli infection in
several families. All but two of the cases occurred in very young children. Investigators’ initial
interviews with the parents of the children didn’t yield any likely food
suspects so they decided to look at their recent shopping lists. Parents in seven families
provided their credit card information and a list of supermarkets where they
had shopped. The two supermarket chains that the parents had used most often
agreed to help with the investigation. The stores searched their central
computers for the precise amount paid and the date and the location of the
shop. From there, investigators
determined that five families had purchased the same brand of fermented,
organic beef sausage. A sixth family was linked to the same sausage
brand through shopping records provided by the kindergarten attended by two
children who became infected with the same E. coli
strain, STEC O26. An unopened sample of the sausage also tested positive for
the strain. “This information proved to
be a strong tool in the investigation, and most likely, the source of the
outbreak would not have been found without the use of this method,” wrote the
researchers. All of the infected
patients recovered. |
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