Rare Elizabethkingia Bacteria Outbreak Infects 44 in Wisconsin, Killing 18

[Eugene]

Source: ABC News

Rare Elizabethkingia Bacteria Outbreak Infects 44 in Wisconsin, Killing 18

By GILLIAN MOHNEY
Mar 4, 2016, 1:24 PM ET

A deadly bacterial outbreak is being investigated in Wisconsin with at least 44 reported cases, killing 18 people, according to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.

The rare infection results from a naturally occurring bacteria called Elizabethkingia anopheles, which are found in soil, fresh water and reservoirs, health officials said. Symptoms include fever, shortness of breath, chills or redness on the skin.

The outbreak has primarily affected people over the age of 65 and everyone infected had a history of at least one serious underlying health condition, according to the Department of Health Services. State and federal health officials said they're looking to find the source of the outbreak.

“Determining the source of the bacteria affecting patients in Wisconsin is a complex process,” State Health Officer Karen McKeown said in a statement this week. “While we recognize there will be many questions we cannot yet answer, we feel it is important to share the limited information we have about the presence of the bacteria, as we continue our work to determine the source.”

The 44 cases were reported from Nov. 1, 2015, to March 2, 2016, according to state health officials. A search for past outbreaks in medical literature suggests this is likely the largest-ever recorded outbreak of the bacteria.

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Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/rare-elizabethkingia-bacteria-outbreak-infects-44-wisconsin-killing/story?id=37399793

[MADem]

1. OK, my first thought (this being DU) was that this post was a snark at someone named Elizabeth KING!

I said to myself "Is that a GOP politician in Wisconsin? Name doesn't ring a bell!!!"


So I went looking and found the answer--Elizabeth King is the person the bacteria is NAMED after!!!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabethkingia_meningoseptica

Elizabethkingia meningoseptica is a Gram negative rod-shaped bacterium widely distributed in nature (e.g. fresh water, salt water, or soil). It may be normally present in fish and frogs but is not normally present in human microflora. In 1959 American bacteriologist Elizabeth O. King (who isolated Kingella in 1960), was studying unclassified bacteria associated with pediatric meningitis at the CDC in Atlanta, when she isolated an organism (CDC group IIa) that she named Flavobacterium meningosepticum (Flavobacterium means "the yellow bacillus" in Latin; meningosepticum likewise means "associated with meningitis and sepsis&quot .[1] In 1994, it was reclassified in the genus Chryseobacterium and renamed Chryseobacterium meningosepticum[2](chryseos = "golden" in Greek, so Chryseobacterium means a golden/yellow rod similar to Flavobacterium). In 2005, a 16S rRNA phylogenetic tree of Chryseobacteria showed that C. meningosepticum along with C. miricola (which was reported to have been isolated from Russian space station Mir in 2001 and placed in the genus Chryseobacterium in 2003[3]) were close to each other but outside the tree of the rest of the Chryseobacteria and were then placed in a new genus Elizabethkingia named after the original discoverer of F. meningosepticum.[4]

And now back to your regular programming!

[postulater]

2. Maybe they've been drinking out of the River.

http://m.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/milwaukee-harbor-a-hot-spot-for-bacteria-resistant-to-antibiotics-b99643194z1-364033921.html

Muck at the bottom of Milwaukee's harbor is a "hot spot" for the growth of fecal bacteria resistant to antibiotics, a University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute study found.

E. coli bacteria resistant to multiple antibiotics are more common in harbor mud than in untreated wastewater flowing to the Jones Island sewage treatment plant, according to a team of scientists from Marquette University, the Medical College of Wisconsin and the School of Freshwater Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

And the resistant bacteria are more common in the mud than in bodily fluids collected from patients at the Medical College. The research team's report, "Detection of multi-drug resistant E. coli in the urban waterways of Milwaukee, WI," was published in the online journal, Frontiers in Microbiology.