Scientists Probe Food Poisonings' Legacy

WASHINGTON — It's a dirty little secret of food poisoning: E. coli and certain other foodborne illnesses can sometimes trigger serious health problems months or years after patients survived that initial bout.

Scientists only now are unraveling a legacy that has largely gone unnoticed.

What they've spotted so far is troubling. In interviews with The Associated Press, they described high blood pressure, kidney damage, even full kidney failure striking 10 to 20 years later in people who survived severe E. coli infection as children, arthritis after a bout of Salmonella or shigella, and a mysterious paralysis that can attack people who just had mild symptoms of Campylobacter.

"Folks often assume once you're over the acute illness, that's it, you're back to normal and that's the end of it," said Dr. Robert Tauxe of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The long-term consequences are "an important but relatively poorly documented, poorly studied area of foodborne illness."

These late effects are believed to make up a very small fraction of the nation's 76 million annual food poisonings, although no one knows just how many people are at risk. A bigger question is what other illnesses have yet to be scientifically linked to food poisoning.

And with a rash of food recalls — including more than 30 million pounds of ground beef pulled off the market last year alone — these are questions are taking on new urgency.

Read the full Washington Post story here.