*** Had food-borne diarrhea? Got Sequela ? Thank de-regulators

April 2012 Scientific American has an interesting story concerning "Food Poisoning's Hidden Legacy."  Most of us probably assume food poisoning means a few days of vomiting and diarrhea and that is it.  Following up on long term effects of such food borne illness leads to more serious conclusions however.

The longer term consequences of illnesses  (Sequela) caused by Salmonella and Shigella infections include reactive arthritis, urinary tract problems, eye problems.  And after illness caused by campylobacter ,illnesses which may follow include Guillain-Barre syndrome and ulcerative colitis.  After illnesses caused by Escherichia coli 0157:H7, may include kidney failure and diabetes.

Find the magazine and read the article if you want information on the statistical studies supporting the idea that serious chromic health problems can result from contaminated food. The information on long-term sequelae  was determined by research on "unearthed" data buried in medical literature.

One of the data studies concerned Walkerton in Ontario Canada which had a serious E.coli illness that hit about half the population. The 2002 study (data study 2010) indicated those with the E.coli illness had a 33 percent greater liklihood of high blood pressure, a 210 percent greater chance of heart attack or stroke, and a 340 percent greater risk of kidney problems in the eight years following the outbreak.

The real plea of the SA article is for better studies of long term consequences of food-borne illness. I do wonder if those who did not get the disease initially had greater resistance of some kind...or if they just were not physically exposed to the initial E.coli.

The author, Maryn McKenna, concludes with

"We want to establish the true burden of disease because that is what policy makers use to decide what is a public health priority," says Barbar Kowalcyk, [The co-founder of the non-profit Center for Foodborne Illness Research and Prevention], "as long as we focus only on the acute form of foodborne illness and nothe long-term health consequences, we will underestimate how significan a problem this is."

Now, consider these long-term illnesses a possible consequence of the past and current retrograde Republican opposition to "big government", opposition to scientific analysis of health data, opposition to food processing inspections, de-regulation and anti-regulations efforts, and pervasive pandering to religious and economic mythology.  Richard Nixon made progress with his push for the Environoment Protection Agency. But his party member's partisan mythology can bite you in the rear.

Scientific American does not have a link for this article yet.  A group mentioned in the article should be mentioned here however.   STOP Food-Borne Illnesses Org

*** Stay tuned and think at least twice before eating half-raw meat and unwashed fruit and vegetables shipped in from who-knows-where --- Doug Wiken

Comments

[D.E. Bishop]

Geez! I am suitably frightened by this!

I just heard a little about this on NPR a few days ago. This is definitely worse than I thought.

Thanks for the info, I think.