Germ Warfare

Dec. 5, 2006— -- It's enough to make you feel queasy: Every time you watch or read the news, there's one more story about people falling ill after eating or taking a cruise.

Stories about E. coli outbreaks, norovirus outbreaks or good ol' garden variety food poisoning -- large-scale cases of food-borne illnesses -- seem to appear every day. But while it may seem that there are more incidents of these illnesses than there used to be, most researchers disagree.

They say that surveillance techniques have increased and more afflicted people know what's happening to them and report their illnesses.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said there are 73 million reports of food-borne illnesses each year -- a number it says falls far short of reality. To make a report, a doctor must give a sample to a state lab, and most cases don't make it that far.

According to the CDC, incidents of E. coli, listeria and campylobacteria have actually decreased by roughly 30 percent over the past decade.

However, certain organisms are now more infectious than they have been in the past, such as E. coli 0157H, the most common form of E. coli and the culprit believed to have contaminated food in this week's Taco Bell incident.

Health investigators Monday said an E. coli outbreak at three Taco Bell restaurants in New Jersey and on Long Island sickened at least 22 people, two of them seriously.

"This type of E. coli has been around for about two decades, but it is much stronger than it used to be," explains Dr. Pascal James Imperato, chairman of the department of preventive medicine at SUNY Downstate Medical Center. "We're not certain why it acquired its virulence, but it causes a more severe form of gastroenteritis in which a number of people can get very ill or even go into kidney failure."

E. coli, short for Escherichia coli, is a common bacteria that lives in human and animal intestines. Some strains produce toxins that can cause a wide range of symptoms, including mild and severe diarrhea, abdominal cramps and blood in the stool.