You may also be interested
A Belgian family of five children, aged 7 to 14 at the time of the facts in August 2003, was poisoned with a pasta salad. The dish was prepared on Friday during a summer picnic that took place the next day. The remains were kept in fridge until Monday. That evening, the family decides to finish the leftovers from the picnic. Leaving the pasta salad from the fridge, a strange smell emerges, but it is still served and eaten, with a little reluctance, by the children.
A few hours after the meal, the youngest of the family, aged 7, begins to feel unwell. She is seized with intense vomiting and can no longer breathe. The whole family leaves for emergencies and the time of the journey the entire siblings are sick with vomiting. But it is the condition of the youngest and her 9-year-old brother that worries the doctors. Both are intubated and placed under mechanical ventilation when they arrive at the emergency room. The general condition of the children deteriorated rapidly and faced with the urgency of the situation, the doctors asked for their transfer to the Louvain hospital.
Unfortunately, the youngest suffered a pulmonary hemorrhage during the trip, forcing the doctors to give her constant cardiac massage to keep her alive. Arriving in Louvain, she is in a coma, suffering from diffuse bleeding and severe muscle cramps. She died 20 minutes later, 13 hours after eating the pasta salad. Because it is this simple meal that is the cause of his death.
A deadly pasta salad
The autopsy uncovers a significant amount of the bacterium Bacillus cereus in his intestines, as well as the beginning of necrosis in the liver. All the children were ill to varying degrees. The 9-year-old boy was treated in an intensive care unit where pediatricians were able to save his liver thanks to a cocktail of drugs and antibiotics; twenty-four hours after the start of treatment, he regained consciousness. The two younger daughters of the family, aged 9 and 10, as well as the eldest, 14, did not suffer liver failure and were kept under observation. The surviving children were discharged from hospital eight days later.
Microbiological analyzes revealed that the salad was contaminated with the bacteria Bacillus cereus which synthesizes either a toxin emetic (which causes vomiting) heat-resistant, cereulide, a diarrheal toxin. The Belgian family was infected with a strain producing the emetic toxin. In general, the symptoms appear between six to eight hours after theingestion contaminated food.
Whether Bacillus cereus is a well-known source of food poisoning, it is not the most common. One case per 5 million inhabitants is identified every year. Most infections go unnoticed, causing mild symptoms, and fatal cases are extremely rare. Before the one reported here, only one case of toxi-infection with B.cereus lethal was described in the literature. The toxin from this bacterium is most potent when the temperature is between 13 and 15°C. The pasta salad was stored in a refrigerator at 14°C, allowing the bacterium to grow during the three days of conservation and to produce a large quantity of toxin which explains the occurrence of this family drama.
Interested in what you just read?