Long-Term Health Problems Associated with Foodborne Illness
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.
I have had 3 kidney transplants. I had my first one at the age of 13. I am now 38 years old. On September 19, 2007 I went to a [fast food restaurant] and had a [hamburger] with cheese and a coke. I was eating lunch at 10:45am so I am assuming that I had one of the fist hamburgers of the day. By 5PM that same afternoon I was sick. By 6pm I had a fever of 102. I was taken by abulance to the emergency room around midnight. By then I was so weak that an ambulance was the only way I could get there. After running many tests I was told that there was e-coli found in my urine.I was never able to give a stool sample because it was nothing but watery diahrea. I spent 4 days in the hospital being given may anitbiotics and i was sent home with some also. The last kidney transplant i had was on July 29, 2002 with no complications, that is until I contracted e-coli. Within a few weeks my ankles started to swell and I had to have a stent placed on my transplanted kidney to help it drain the urine. I told all of my Doctors that I had contracted e-coli and they all bascially blew me off. I have had to stop working because of the problems with my kidney and I am due to have the stent in my kidney replaced next week. Many of my medicines have had to be changed to get my transplant back to a stable condition. I do believe with all my heart that the complications i am having are all due to the fact that i had e-coli. My brother ate at the same [fast food restaurant] later that same day and he told me later when he found out that i had gotten so sick, that after he ate his [hamburger] with cheese, he had diarhea for 2 days. I do not think this is a coincidence. I had no way to test the hamburger that I ate because I ate it all but, I know that all of the problems that I am having now started ONLY AFTER eating that hamburger. Needless to say I will never be eating another hamburger from [fast food restaurant] again. No there is no legal way to prove that the e-coli came from them but, I will alway believe that it did. So all these companies will continue selling food that is killing us and they do not have to be held responsible. How many people go out to eat a simple hamburger and save a sample because it may be contaminated? I surely didn't. And because of that I have lost my job and I am back and forth to the doctor once again hoping that my kidney will be able to bounce back from the contamination. Kari