INFANTILE DIARRHEA PRODUCED BY HEAT-STABLE... : New England Journal of Medicine (original) (raw)

INFANTILE DIARRHEA PRODUCED BY HEAT-STABLE ENTEROTOXIGENIC ESCHERICHIA COLI

Robert W. Ryder
Kaye I. Wachsmuth
Alfred E. Buxton
Dolores G. Evans
Herbert L. DuPont
Edward Mason
Fred F. Barrett

New England Journal of Medicine

295(16):p 849-853, October 14, 1976.

| DOI: 10.1056/NEJM197610142951601

Abstract

Between December, 1974, and August 1975, intestinal illness occurred in 55 of 205 infants admitted to the special-care nurseries of a large children's hospital. Escherichia coli serotype 078: K80:H12, which produced a heat-stable enterotoxin, was isolated from 18 of 25 symptomatic infants as compared with 14 of 55 asymptomatic infants (P<0.001). Colistin administered prophylactically to 24 culture-negative asymptomatic infants did not prevent colonization in 10, whereas colonization did occur in 22 of 56 not receiving colistin (P = 1.0).

This outbreak provides laboratory and epidemiologic evidence that heat-stable enterotoxigenic Esch. coli is pathogenic in human beings and produces infantile diarrhea. (N Engl J Med 295:849-853, 1976)