What made a little girl from Rochester, Minnesota, sick? Last week, after 6 weeks in the hospital, A little girl who was diagnosed with an E. coli infection went home. She was diagnosed with E. coli in July and suffered kidney failure from a severe complication called hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), according to the Rochester PostBulletin.
Her symptoms started in Nebraska, but the source of the illness is yet unknown.
Sometimes the source of an E. coli infection is never found, and in some cases, the source is not found for months. It takes determination and persistence to find the source of illness if it is not part immediately evident that it is part of an outbreak.
With dangerous strains of E. coli like O157:H7, there is a federal database of laboratory-confirmed cases, like Charlotte’s. It can take weeks for a case to appear in this database because of the following:
- The incubation period for E. coli can be as long as 10 days;
- It can take several days for doctors to diagnose the illness;
- It can take several more days for additional testing to be done to determine if it is O157 or another serotype of the bacteria;
- It can take several more days or weeks for DNA testing to be done to find the genetic “fingerprint” of the E. coli bacteria that made someone sick.
It is still possible that the source of this little one’s illness will be found.
Our Minnesota E. coli lawyers investigate cases like this. In a press call yesterday, one of our clients said, “Fred carried John and me through these months of fear. They found out through their investigation how John got sick, and where the contamination happened.”
It can take a lawsuit to get all of the evidence gathered by health officials and uncover the source.
Fred Pritzker can be contacted at 612-338-0202 or 1-888-377-8900 (toll-free). If you prefer, you can email Fred at [email protected] or use our online free consultation form.