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Long-Term Health Problems Associated with Foodborne Illness

By Pritzker | Ruohonen

As food safety lawyers, we know that foodborne illnesses can lead to serious health problems that may not manifest themselves until months or years after a person first becomes ill. That is why compensation packages for victims of foodborne outbreaks need to include amounts for future medical expenses and future pain and suffering. 

Delayed health consequences of foodborne illnesses are discussed in one of today's AP stories, “Food Poisoning Can Be Long-Term Problem”:   

It's a dirty little secret of food poisoning: E. coli and certain other foodborne illnesses can sometimes trigger serious health problems months or years after patients survived that initial bout. Scientists only now are unraveling a legacy that has largely gone unnoticed.

What they've spotted so far is troubling. In interviews with The Associated Press, they described high blood pressure, kidney damage, even full kidney failure striking 10 to 20 years later in people who survived severe E. coli infection as children, arthritis after a bout of salmonella or shigella, and a mysterious paralysis that can attack people who just had mild symptoms of campylobacter.

In an effort to document and study some of these health affects, S.T.O.P. (Safe Tables Our Priority) is creating a national registry of foodborne illness survivors with long-term health problems, according to AP. The story quotes Donna Rosenbaum, Executive Director of S.T.O.P., "We're drastically underestimating the burden on society that foodborne illnesses represent."

The AP story discusses some of the long-term health consequences of an E. coli infection that has led to the development of hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS):

About 10 percent of E. coli sufferers develop a life-threatening complication called hemolytic uremic syndrome, or HUS, where their kidneys and other organs fail.

Ten to 20 years after they recover, between 30 percent and half of HUS survivors will have some kidney-caused problem, says Dr. Andrew Pavia, the university's pediatric infectious diseases chief. That includes high blood pressure caused by scarred kidneys, slowly failing kidneys, even end-stage kidney failure that requires dialysis.

The story also discusses how many of the nations Guillain-Barre cases are associated with previous Campylobacter infections:

About 1 in 1,000 sufferers of campylobacter, a diarrhea-causing infection spread by raw poultry, develop far more serious Guillain-Barre syndrome a month or so later. Their body attacks their nerves, causing paralysis that usually requires intensive care and a ventilator to breathe. About a third of the nation's Guillain-Barre cases have been linked to previous campylobacter, even if the diarrhea was very mild, and they typically suffer a more severe case than patients who never had food poisoning.

The story points out the connection between reactive arthritis and Salmonella, Shigella and Yersinia:

A small number of people develop what's called reactive arthritis six months or longer after a bout of salmonella. It causes joint pain, eye inflammation, sometimes painful urination, and can lead to chronic arthritis. Certain strains of shigella and yersinia bacteria, far more common abroad than in the U.S., trigger this reactive arthritis, too.

Full post as published by Food Poisoning Law Blog on January 22, 2008 (boomark / email).