A Texan woman has died after contracting a flesh-eating bacteria after eating raw oysters on a trip to the the Louisiana coast.
Jeanette LeBlanc died after a three-week battle with vibriosis, an illness typically caused by eating raw seafood, CBS reported.
After shucking and eating roughly two dozen raw oysters with her wife and a friend, LeBlanc began having respiratory distress and a rash, which she and her wife initially assumed were signs of an allergic reaction. But, when she went to the hospital, doctors said she had been infected by Vibrio bacteria.
“It’s a flesh-eating bacteria,” her wife, Vicki Bergquist, told local news station KLFY. “She had severe wounds on her legs from that bacteria.”
The CDC estimates that vibriosis causes 80,000 illnesses each year in the US, most caused by consuming contaminated food. While most people recover from the infection, one variant — the Vibrio vulnificus infection — is often deadly. One in four infected people die, often within just a day or two of becoming ill.
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