Food Safety News
They visited Bordeaux, France, last month for the Rugby World Cup and reported eating home-canned sardines in the same bar and restaurant
The University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) reports that 15 cases of botulism poisoning resulted, including one death.
The deadly outbreak was confirmed by the open-access platform known as Eurosurveillance.
CIDRAP’s summary of the botulism outbreak follows:
The report presented the clinical case descriptions of eight patients seen at the Bordeaux University Hospital, where the first patient treated in the outbreak was admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) on Sept. 6.
Home-canned sardines implicated
All three initial patients seen at the hospital reported visiting France for the rugby tournament. On Sept. 10, French investigators questioned the three, who all reported eating home-canned sardines in the same bar and restaurant in Bordeaux.
On Sept. 11 and Sept. 12, the hospital saw five more patients, all international visitors, for symptoms of botulism poisoning, including descending paralysis and extensive gastrointestinal illness.
The patients came from Canada, France, Ireland, and the United States. Two patients were men, six were women, and only one was younger than 50. The average time between the consumption of sardines and the first signs of illness was 13 hours.
“Six of eight cases required invasive mechanical ventilation because of respiratory muscle paralysis,” the CIDRAP authors said. The median delay between the onset of symptoms and intubation was 25 hours.
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