Tag: E coli

Microbiology helps out (finally)

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It’s no wonder that the beagle has been feeling a bit rough.

We got the lab results back from her specimen – it’s only taken A WHOLE WEEK – and it turns out that her resident Escherichia coli is rather resistant to everything

Certainly to the three antibiotics she’s been on so far, anyway. (That’s post-op Co-amoxyclav, then Clindamycin and thenTrimethoprim, for my microbiological readers.)

So now we move onto the Fluoroquinolones (Enrofloxacin, for my microbiological readers.)

And the good news is that we know that it’s sensitive to this. And that means that she can finally get mended.

I can’t believe that it’s taken 7 days to get this result. Back in my day, we would have got this done overnight. Yes, even for a beagle.

It’s been a really unfortunate run for Colin, but I think we finally have the answer to our question about how to get her healthy again.

A taste of Durban

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Given the ongoing state of Durban’s beaches – or rather the water just off them – as illustrated here:

I found the prospect of buying some brown gloop labelled “Taste of Durban”, and with an image of those very same beaches and bits of Indian Ocean, rather unappealing.

Mind you, this actually being Nutella and not sea poop, it’s not like I could afford it anyway.

Ridiculously expensive stuff, although happily E.coli free.

That E.coli announcement

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There’s an outbreak of E.coli in the UK. And it’s a particularly nasty one.

A lot of people are quite upset that the announcement contained that phrase:

a nationally distributed food item

As if there’s some sort of conspiracy in not announcing exactly what food item it is, presumably in order to allow more people to get sick.

All the blue ticks. All the time.

Surprisingly though, the nationally distributed food item can’t be named, because they don’t know what it is. (Microbiologists will be waving their hands in the air, trying to attract the teacher’s attention so they can tell you that it’s almost certainly a pre-prepared salad of sorts, but that’s because it’s always a pre-prepared salad of sorts which is to blame when you get this sort of thing.)

What they do know however, is where the bug didn’t come from. Not from a particular holiday destination or cruise. Not from “wild” swimming. Not from a single water source. Not from a school canteen. And so on. And they can do this because of the demographics of the patients, and their geographic distribution.

It’s easy to tie these cases down to one specific bug: genome sequencing can do that very quickly. What it’s more difficult to do is to then work out the link between all of those cases. So what the UKHSA is doing with this statement is trying to reassure the public that swimming, drinking water, going on holiday etc etc is absolutely fine.

Can they identify the nationally distributed food item? No, not yet. Or they would have done.

They could guess, but then they’d get into trouble either simply for guessing, or for guessing incorrectly. Damned if they do, and damned – albeit by tossers on twitter – when they don’t.

They’ll let us know as soon as they know. That’s how these things work.

And in the meantime? Well, there’s plenty of advice on that link about the best way to avoid the bug and avoid getting sick. But with a population of about 70 million people, and “just” 113 cases, I honestly don’t think that you should be treating your fridge as a potential ticking timebomb.

I’d still wash that lettuce really well before you eat it, though.