15 children stricken with virulent E. Coli after playing in mud pit in Louisianna, USA

[Emily]

http://www.thenewsstar.com/article/20110604/NEWS01/106040326

Stricken with E. coli, girl fighting
9:00 PM, Jun. 3, 2011 |

[snip]

"We do know based on preliminary analysis that the children who played in the mud pit more than five minutes were more likely to have symptoms," Jones said. "But the state lab is unable to do environmental testing, so we're probably not going to know definitively."

At least 3 children were hospitalized and one 5-yr-old girl is gravely ill with collapsed lungs. Though the article indicates E. Coli 0157 strain was found, It's too bad environmental testing can't be done. I noticed that the strain of the outbreak in Europe is believed to have caused outbreaks in the US in the 1980's, (though it has evolved significantly since then.)


http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/further-analysis-on-improved-genome-assembly-indicates-the-outbreak-e-coli-has-complex-genetics-with-resistance-to-at-least-eight-antibiotics-123159123.html

[snip]
This data further confirms the serotype of the outbreak strain is O104, and while O104 E. coli strains have previously been implicated in outbreaks in the United States, BGI's initial results suggest that the current outbreak and the previous US O104 strain are genetically distinct. The sequences of seven housekeeping genes from the outbreak strain were also used in MLST (multi-locus sequences typing) analysis against 3,800 E. coli strains (http://mlst.ucc.ie/), and all seven genes were found to be different between the US and current outbreak strain.....