Diarrhoea-inducing cyclospora outbreak spreads across US<\/a><\/p>\nThe US CDC is investigating thousands of possible cases across 34 states, as officials track down the source of the outbreak.<\/p>\n
The illness it causes, called cyclosporiasis, is not usually life-threatening and is typically treated with antibiotics.<\/p>\n
Many cases are never linked to a specific food or other source, and for years few US cyclospora outbreaks were reported.<\/p>\n
But the number started rising about a decade ago, with a particularly notable spike in 2019, when 4,700 cases were reported.<\/p>\n
The current surge has far surpassed that.<\/p>\n
Michigan, the apparent epicentre of this latest outbreak, is reporting more than 5,000 cases, including about 100 hospitalisations.<\/p>\n
More than 2,000 additional probable and suspected cases have also been reported in other states.<\/p>\n
Climate change, better detection behind rise<\/p>\n
Experts attribute the increasing trend in cases to climate change and better detection.<\/p>\n
They also say it is likely that cases were historically under-reported, for several reasons.<\/p>\n
Some common tests used to check for food poisoning have not been geared to detect cyclospora, for example.<\/p>\n
Technicians are also unable to grow the parasite in labs, making it hard to draw evidence from contaminated produce.<\/p>\n
It can also be hard to figure out what food sick people had in common because sometimes it is a single ingredient that might be common in multiple recipes, such as basil or coriander.<\/p>\n
In North Carolina, where the outbreak has now surpassed 300 cases, authorities said the most commonly reported foods consumed before people fell ill included parsley, coriander and lettuce.<\/p>\n
However, it is not clear if those ingredients were the source of the infections, they added, and the outbreak did not appear to be linked to Taco Bell in that state.<\/p>\n
Many of the ill people in Michigan also said they did not eat at Taco Bell, state health officials said on Friday.<\/p>\n
AP\/ABC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US health officials have identified lettuce served at Taco Bell restaurants across five states as one of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":807581,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,99,2154,368885,368884,133344,2156,6202,94261,189275,87016,381747],"class_list":["post-807580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-cdc","tag-cyclospora","tag-cyclosporiasis","tag-diarrhoea","tag-fda","tag-food-and-drug-administration","tag-food-poisoning","tag-lettuce","tag-taco-bell","tag-us-centers-for-disease-control-and-prevention"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=807580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/807581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=807580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=807580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=807580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}