ABSTRACT
In August 2011, a case of canine rabies was notified to the French veterinary services. The dog was a three-month-old puppy illegally imported from Morocco that presented behavioural changes on 1 August and was admitted to a veterinary clinic on 6 August. It died the following day and the body was shortly sent to the national reference centre where rabies was laboratory-confirmed on 11 August. Contact tracing and post-exposure treatment were initiated immediately.
Subject(s)
Contact Tracing , Dog Diseases/diagnosis , Rabies virus/isolation & purification , Rabies/diagnosis , Animals , Commerce , Dog Diseases/transmission , Dog Diseases/virology , Dogs , Fluorescent Antibody Technique, Direct , France , Humans , Jurisprudence , Morocco , Post-Exposure Prophylaxis , RNA, Viral , Rabies/transmission , Rabies/veterinary , Rabies/virology , TravelABSTRACT
A family cluster of three cases of type E botulism were identified in south-east France in September 2009. The suspected food source of infection was a vacuum packed hot-smoked whitefish of Canadian origin purchased by the family during a visit to Finland and consumed several weeks later in France on the day prior to symptom onset. No leftover fish was available to confirm this hypothesis. Vacuum packed hot-smoked whitefish has previously been associated with cases of type E botulism in multiple countries, including Finland, Germany, the United States and Israel.
Subject(s)
Botulism/epidemiology , Clostridium botulinum type E/isolation & purification , Disease Outbreaks , Food Microbiology , Food Preservation , Salmonidae/microbiology , Adolescent , Animals , Biological Assay , Botulism/transmission , Canada , Finland , Food Handling/methods , Food Handling/standards , Food Packaging , France/epidemiology , Humans , Mice , Middle Aged , Quadriplegia/etiology , Refrigeration , TemperatureABSTRACT
Sorbitol-fermenting Escherichia coli O157:[H7] is a particularly virulent clone of E. coli O157:H7 associated with a higher incidence of haemolytic uraemic syndrome and a higher case fatality rate. Many fundamental aspects of its epidemiology remain to be elucidated, including its reservoir and transmission routes and vehicles. We describe an outbreak of sorbitol-fermenting E. coli O157:[H7] that occurred in France in 2011. Eighteen cases of paediatric haemolytic uraemic syndrome with symptom onset between 6 June and 15 July 2011 were identified among children aged 6 months to 10 years residing in northern France. A strain of sorbitol-fermenting E. coli O157:[H7] stx2a eae was isolated from ten cases. Epidemiological, microbiological and trace-back investigations identified multiply-contaminated frozen ground beef products bought in a supermarket chain as the outbreak vehicle. Strains with three distinct pulsotypes that were isolated from patients, ground beef preparations recovered from patients' freezers and from stored production samples taken at the production plant were indistinguishable upon molecular comparison. This investigation documents microbiologically confirmed foodborne transmission of sorbitol-fermenting of E. coli O157 via beef and could additionally provide evidence of a reservoir in cattle for this pathogen.