Salmonella Illnesses Now Top 1,000

(HealthDay News) -- The number of people sickened in the ongoing salmonella outbreak has now surpassed 1,000, and while certain types of tomatoes remain the suspected cause, U.S. health officials on Wednesday added hot peppers and cilantro as potential suspects.

"We continue to get new reported cases every day," Dr. Robert Tauxe, deputy director of the division of foodborne, bacterial and mycotic diseases at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said during a late afternoon teleconference. "This is the largest foodborne outbreak in the United States."

Since the outbreak began in April, 1,017 people in 41 states, the District of Columbia and Canada have fallen ill, and at least 203 people have been hospitalized. One death -- a Texas man in his 80s -- has been associated with the outbreak. Also, a man in his 60s who died in Texas from cancer had a Salmonella Saintpaul infection at the time of his death, the CDC reported Wednesday on its Web site.

In addition, according to the CDC, 300 of those people became ill after June 1.

An initial investigation of the outbreak, in New Mexico and Texas, suggested raw tomatoes as the likely source of the contamination. But a larger, nationwide study comparing persons who were ill in June found that those who were sickened were likely to have recently eaten raw tomatoes, as well as fresh jalapeno and serrano peppers, and fresh cilantro. These foods are typically consumed together, the CDC said.

Recently, many clusters of illnesses have been identified involving people who had eaten in restaurants. In one cluster, illnesses were linked to consumption of an item containing fresh tomatoes and fresh jalapeno peppers. In another two clusters, illnesses were linked to a food item containing fresh jalapeno peppers, leading federal officials to believe that jalapeno peppers caused some of the reported illnesses, the CDC said.

However, "at this we have not found any samples of tomatoes or peppers positive for Salmonella Saintpaul," Steve Sundlof, director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, told reporters at the teleconference.

Tauxe added, "Neither tomatoes nor jalapenos explain the entire outbreak at this point. We're presuming that both of them cause illness."

When it comes to tomatoes, officials said the advice to consumers remains the same: Avoid raw red plum, red Roma, round red tomatoes, and products containing these raw tomatoes.

On Wednesday, Tauxe added that people at risk of infection, including infants and elderly people, should avoid eating jalapeno peppers.

Salmonella is a bacteria that can cause bloody diarrhea in humans. Some 40,000 cases of salmonellosis are reported in the United States each year, although the CDC estimates that because milder cases are not diagnosed or reported, the actual number of infections may be 30 or more times greater. Approximately 600 people die each year after being infected.

However, the strain of Salmonella Saintpaul had been previously considered rare. In 2007, according to the CDC, there were only three people infected in the country during April through June.

More information
Visit the CDC for more on the salmonella outbreak.

One Swipe or More? The Lowdown on Germ-Killing Wipes

By Theresa Tamkins

I accidentally dropped a “ health news” bomb on a colleague the other day. I strolled into her office and blurted it out: “Did you hear that antimicrobial wipes just spread bacteria from one spot to another?”
She took one look at the giant canister of wipes spilling out of her purse and another on the desk (she’s a nursing mom), and yelled, “Oh, God! No!”
So let me formally apologize for that one. The study actually found that overusing those wipes could spread, rather than kill, bacteria in a simulated hospital-like setting—not in the home. Read More

Bacterial Infection May Boost SIDS Risk

(HealthDay News) -- Could common bacterial infections cause some cases of sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS?

According to the British authors of a study in this week's issue of The Lancet, the answer is a qualified yes. The researchers found high levels of Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria in children who had died of SIDS.

But in no way does this mean that parents should be demanding antibiotics for their newborns, cautioned Dr. Jim Greenberg, director of the division of neonatology at Cincinnati Children's Hospital. "This still falls under the category of preliminary research and doesn't have any direct application to how we think about patient care," he said.

"As yet, we do not understand the true significance of the findings," added Dr. Nigel Klein, co-author of the study and professor of infectious disease and immunology and head of the department of infection at the University of London and Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in the United Kingdom. "At present, a causal link has not been established. As such, there are no direct clinical implications."

According to the American SIDS Institute, the rate of SIDS has dropped dramatically since 1983, thanks to concerted prevention efforts on the part of a number of organizations. However, about 2,500 infants still die of SIDS every year in the United States.

The causes largely remain a mystery, although putting a baby to sleep on his or her back and avoiding smoking near the child are known to be protective.

Klein and his colleagues conducted autopsies on 546 infants who had died suddenly between the ages of 7 and 365 days. Samples of bacteria were taken from 470 of the infants.

Many more potentially harmful organisms were isolated from children whose sudden death could not be explained than from infants whose deaths were explained by non-infectious causes. In particular, S. aureus ("staph") and E. coli had a greater presence in unexplained deaths than in those explained by non-infectious causes.

As an accompanying editorial pointed out, the number of SIDS cases peaks at 8 weeks to 10 weeks of age. That's a time-frame coinciding with blood concentrations of immunoglobulin that protect newborns against bacterial infections.

"This is just at the point that antibodies that go across the placenta -- from mom to baby -- to protect them are starting to disappear, and babies haven't made a lot of their own antibodies yet," noted Dr. Cheryl Cipriani, an associate professor of pediatrics at Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine and a neonatologist with Scott & White. "This is a particular point in time where babies seem to be vulnerable," she said.

Also, both S. aureus and E. coli are bacteria that make toxins, Cipriani explained, "and a toxin might not necessarily cause all the histological changes that you see with infections."

"This is another building block in our knowledge about these kinds of deaths, but association doesn't mean cause," Cipriani cautioned. "But it's a large enough group of babies where you think the findings need to be paid attention to."

Until precise causes for SIDS are uncovered, parents should be aware that putting infants to sleep on their back ("Back to Sleep") reduces the risk of SIDS by 40 percent to 60 percent, Greenberg said. Avoiding your child's exposure to cigarette smoke also reduces this risk.

Using a pacifier might also lower risk, but this is controversial, Greenberg added.

More information
There's more on SIDS at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.