Little-known E. coli strain O111 starts gaining notoriety

— -- Braylee Beaver, 20 months old, is back to her playful self after a 12-day hospital stay in which she received dialysis treatment and was stuck with so many needles she thought she was being punished, says her father.

Beaver was allegedly sickened by an E. coli bacteria but not E. coli O157:H7, the type that most consumers are aware of. That bacteria drove the recall of almost 30 million pounds of meat last year and was blamed for an outbreak involving fresh spinach in 2006 in which five died.

Instead, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says Beaver and 313 others who ate food from an Oklahoma restaurant in August were sickened by E. coli O111, a rare type of E. coli that can also be deadly and is becoming increasingly familiar to public health officials.

From 1990 to 2007, O111 was linked to 10 reported illness outbreaks in the U.S., the CDC says. Four of the 10 were linked to food. Before the Oklahoma outbreak, in which one person died, the biggest O111 outbreak happened in New York in 2004. Unpasteurized apple cider was blamed for 212 illnesses.

Milder reactions

E. coli O111 is a Shiga toxin-producing E. coli, or STEC. It is one of a handful of non-O157 STECs that have caused 22 reported illness outbreaks in the U.S. from 1990 to 2007, the CDC says. Food caused 10 of the outbreaks.

Illnesses caused by the non-O157 STECs tend to be milder than those caused by O157, the CDC says. But some can cause equally severe disease and kidney failure, a danger of O157. In Oklahoma, 17 needed dialysis, state officials say.

The number of reported non-O157 outbreaks is small. But others may have gone unreported because doctors may not have looked for non-O157 E. coli in sick patients. "There's a significant possibility that illnesses and outbreaks have been missed," says Elisabeth Hagen of the Office of Public Health for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The CDC estimates that more than 25,000 non-O157 STEC infections occur each year in the U.S. — about a third the number of O157:H7 infections.