E. coli death toll rises to 50: authorities

June 30, 2011

The death toll from a killer E. coli outbreak centred in Germany has risen to 50 with another death in Germany and one in the United States, health authorities said Thursday.

A 74-year-old woman died in Germany's northern Hanover region on Wednesday from haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS), a kidney complaint caused by the enterohaemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC) bacterium, local health official Nils Meyer said.

The (WHO), meanwhile, confirmed that a person who died of HUS in the United States had been infected with the same strain of EHEC.

All but two of the EHEC fatalities have so far been in Germany, apart from the new US case and a woman who died in Sweden shortly after returning from a a visit to Germany.

The WHO said 4,050 infections have been confirmed in 14 European countries, the United States and Canada -- more than 3,900 of them in Germany.

The outbreak has been blamed on organic vegetable sprouts.

(c) 2011 AFP


Rank not rated yet
Relevant PhysicsForums posts

More news stories

Keep food safety in mind this memorial day weekend

(HealthDay) -- Picnics, parades and cookouts are as much a part of Memorial Day weekend as tributes to the United States' war veterans.

Medicine & Health / Health

created 15 hours ago | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

Color-changing contact lenses to help diabetics (w/ Video)

For the millions of Americans with diabetes, the inconvenient and often painful method of testing blood sugar levels is a way of life. But research and innovative product design by scientists at The University of Akron may ...

Medicine & Health / Diabetes

created May 23, 2012 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (7) | comments 4 | with audio podcast

Missouri opts for untested drug for executions

(AP) -- The same anesthetic that caused the overdose death of pop star Michael Jackson is now the drug of choice for executions in Missouri, causing a stir among critics who question how the state can guarantee ...

Medicine & Health / Medications

created May 24, 2012 | popularity not rated yet | comments 4

Thioridazine kills cancer stem cells in human while avoiding toxic side-effects of conventional cancer treatments

A team of scientists at McMaster University has discovered a drug, thioridazine, successfully kills cancer stem cells in the human while avoiding the toxic side-effects of conventional cancer treatments.

Medicine & Health / Cancer

created May 24, 2012 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (40) | comments 3 | with audio podcast

Of mice and mental models: Neuroscientific implications of risk-optimized behavior in the mouse

(Medical Xpress) -- Regardless of an organism’s biological complexity, every encephalized animal continuously makes under-informed behavioral choices that can have serious consequences. Despite its ubiquity, ...

Medicine & Health / Neuroscience

created May 25, 2012 | popularity 4 / 5 (1) | comments 0 | with audio podcast feature


Nvidia trumpets Tegra 3 phone design wins for 2012

(Phys.org) -- Nvidia’s competitive war paint has a name, Tegra 3. On the heels of Nvidia announcements about lowering costs of its Tegra 3 processors and Nvidia-enabled tablets running Android Ice Cream ...

Browser wars flare in mobile space

The browser wars are heating up again, but this time the fight is for dominance of the mobile Internet.

Scientist: Evolution debate will soon be history

(AP) -- Richard Leakey predicts skepticism over evolution will soon be history. Not that the avowed atheist has any doubts himself.

Dell tablet leak: 10.1-inch display, two-battery choice

(Phys.org) -- Headline after headline talks about vendors’ tablets in the wings as likely number-one contenders for the iPad. Such claims have justifiably been taken with a grain of salt, considering ...

Social welfare cuts ultimately come with heavy price, researchers say

(Phys.org) -- Slashing government funding for Medicaid, food stamps and other programs that serve the poor – while politically popular with some lawmakers and many conservatives – may do more harm ...

Is a classical electrodynamics law incompatible with special relativity?

(Phys.org) -- The laws of classical electromagnetism that were developed in the 19th century are the same laws that scientists use today. They include Maxwell’s four equations along with the Lorentz la ...