Washington Injury Law Blog

Doctors are now linking serious health problems and diseases to E. coli and other food-borne illnesses thought to have been recovered from years or decades earlier. The Seattle PI reports that scientists “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.” ”‘Folks often assume once you’re over the acute illness, that’s it, you’re back to normal and that’s the end of it,’ said Dr. Robert Tauxe of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

The long-term effects have yet to be studied in full so its unclear how many people are at risk. It’s also unclear what other illnesses may be linked to food poisoning. However, the lasting effects of food poisoning appear to have been totally underestimated. Just ask Seattle resident Alyssa Chrobuck who suffered E. coli poisoning as a 5 year-old in the Jack In the Box outbreak 15 years ago.

Alyssa was hospitalized with serious complications from the E.coli infection. Alyssa is now a 20 year-old college student who suffers from high blood pressure, hospitalizations for colon inflammation, a hiatal hernia, thyroid removal, and endometriosis. All of which is very uncommon for a 20 year-old young woman. She is convince if not for the E. coli infection her health would be much better.

According to the Centers for Disease Control food-borne illnesses cause 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths a year. Among survivors, some long-term consequences are obvious from the outset. Some required kidney transplants and may have scarred intestines that cause lasting digestive difficulty. According University of Utah’s Dr. Andrew Pavia, the university’s pediatric infectious diseases chief, E. coli doesn’t seem to trigger long-term problems unless it started shutting down the kidneys when first infected. Future studies may show otherwise, but for now it appears only about 10% of E. coli sufferers develop kidney problems when first infected, therefore only 10% may develop these additional health problems later in life.

Regardless still pretty scary stuff!