 Federal officials said today they have zeroed in on restaurant tomatoes as the cause of a recent nationwide Salmonella outbreak.
| If it's not spinach it's tomatoes. I consider all salads suspect. I'm having ice cream instead. |
At a press conference, Christopher Braden, MD, chief of outbreak response and surveillance in the foodborne disease branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said 183 Americans from 21 states were sickened in the outbreak. Two Canadians also fell ill. Twenty two (12%) patients were hospitalized, which Braden said was typical for a Salmonella enterica serotype Typhimurium outbreak.
The organism typically causes fever and nonbloody flux diarrhea that resolves in a week. The CDC detected the outbreak 2 weeks ago through PulseNet, an electronic network for sharing molecular fingerprinting (pulsed-field gel electrophoresis) data. At the same time, states were noticing clusters of patients who had the same strain and genetic fingerprint. The CDC said cases in the outbreak have been reported since Sep 1. Most of the states affected are in the eastern half of the nation. |