Via The Local.se: German E.coli outbreak spreads to Sweden. Excerpt:
Ten Swedes are severly ill and many more are suffering other effects from a virulent enterohaemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC) bacteria following the recent outbreak of the disease in Northern Germany.
According to Sofie Ivarsson, epidemiologist at the Swedish Institute for Communicable Disease Control (Smitskyddsinstitutet), it is the complication haemolytic-uremic syndrome (HUS) that causes patients serious trouble.
“It is the kidneys that are hit by HUS, but other systems are also affected,” she said to news agency TT.
Ivarsson also told TT that those who were not sick enough to require hospitalisation still suffer from a serious gastric illness with diarrhoea and bloody stools.
What is extraordinary with this outbreak is that it is only adults that have suffered complications.
“Usually these kinds of complications tend to strike against children,” Ivarsson said to TT.
So far the disease has been identified in several southern Swedish counties and tests are showing that it is probably the same bacteria as the recent outbreak in Germany.
The institute was informed of the first Swedish case during the second week in May. More Swedes are expected to fall ill because it takes a while before a person who has contracted the disease first starts showing symptoms.
The institute is taking the situation seriously and has urged hospitals to be take extra care with patients seeking care for EHEC-like symptoms such as bloody diarrhoea or abdominal pain and to quickly test them for E.Coli infection.
Since the end of April there have been 214 reported cases of HUS in Germany and several hundred cases of E.Coli infection, an unusually high number of cases in such short period of time.
