‘Cholera’ warning as warming seas carry bugs to UK

A DEADLY bug similar to cholera could hit the UK as warming oceans push a cocktail of tropical diseases towards British waters.

The bug is in the same family of bacteria – Vibrio – and has been detected 1,000 miles north of its usual range.

Professor Camille Parmesan, a world expert in the field, warned of the threat in a report for an environmental network.

She and colleague Professor Martin Attrill said there is an ‘increased risk of harmful Vibrio bacteria outbreaks in moderately cold waters’.

They cited ‘northern temperate and boreal zones such as northern USA and Alaska, Canada, the UK and Norway’.

The scientists said: ‘There are early signs that human health is already being impacted by enhanced survival and spread of tropical diseases with increasing temperatures.’

Professor Parmesan, based at the University of Plymouth and the University of Texas, highlighted ‘particularly pathogenic species of bacteria in the genus Vibrio (one of which causes cholera)’.

The scientists also warned of species in algal blooms which cause a variety of neurological illnesses, such as ciguatera, a form of poisoning.

The researchers claim that rising sea surface temperatures are allowing deadly bacteria and algal blooms to spread out of the tropics towards the North and South Poles.

A Vibrio vulnificus bacterium – similar to the Vibrio cholerae bacteria which causes cholera – has been found recently as far north as the Baltic and Alaska. It has never been found before in these latitudes, Professor Parmesan added in the report for the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

There are also signs that ciguatera, caused by toxins from a type of plankton found on coral, algae and seaweed, is moving north from the tropics. Both illnesses can be caught by eating infected seafood and even by swimming.

Alarmingly, both were unknown in colder northern waters in the past.

Vibrio vulnificus causes acute gastro-enteritis or septicaemia from eating raw or under-cooked shellfish. In warmer regions, such as the Gulf of Mexico, up to half of victims who end up in hospital have died. Most have been infected by oysters.

‘Those that end up in hospital are high-risk groups, but a healthy person can still die from it,’ Professor Parmesan said.

The bacteria does not change the way shellfish look, taste or smell, so there is no way of telling you are eating the bugs. Swimmers can be at risk of flesh-eating infections if they are in contaminated sea water and have open wounds.

The toxin causing ciguatera is odourless, tasteless and cannot be removed by conventional cooking.

It causes severe, sometimes lethal, gastric and neurological damage. Professor Parmesan said that the report, written with Professor Attrill, director of the Plymouth University Marine Institute, ‘sets out in stark terms the scale of the change and the challenge we are facing’.

No cases of cholera have originated in here for more than 100 years although a handful of travellers have brought the infection back with them.

‘A healthy person can still die’