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Friday, May 27, 2011

German E.coli outbreak spreads to Sweden

Via The Local :

" 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 kind of complications tend to strike against children,” Ivarsson said to TT.

So far the disease have been identified in several southern Swedish counties and tests are showing that it is probably the same bacteria as the recent outbreak in Germany."

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