CDC issues advisory for rare bacterial infection
A health alert has been issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in response to reports of a deadly bacterial infection that thrives in warm coastal waters.
Vibrio vulnificus bacteria can be found in raw or undercooked seafood, saltwater and brackish water. The most common way to become infected is when an open wound comes into contact with vibrio bacteria in water.
At least a dozen people have died from the infection across the country this year. About 80,000 people get vibrio infections each year.
Of those infected, about 100 people will die annually in the U.S., according to the CDC.
As ocean waters warm because of climate change, the Vibrio vulnificus is migrating north, studies have found.
“The warmer water is, the more bacteria can reproduce faster,” researcher Gabby Barbarite at Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute in Fort Pierce, Florida, told USA TODAY.
Infections have increased eightfold from 1988 to 2018 around the country, according to research published in March in the journal Nature Portfolio. The bacteria and infections are spreading northward up the East Coast at a rate of about 30 miles a year, researchers say.
“Cases used to be concentrated almost exclusively in the Gulf of Mexico in the southern United States,” Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University, told USA TODAY earlier this year.
Vibrio vulnificus is “actually always in water,” Manisha Juthani, commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Public Health, said at a news conference Monday. “What happens in the summertime is bacteria like this tend to overgrow, and if you have an open wound, you should never be getting into water because there are any number of bacteria that are in the water.”
Vibrio vulnificus, or vibriosis, is a bacterial infection known to cause human illness, according to the CDC.
The condition has been nicknamed “flesh-eating” bacteria even though the death of soft tissue can be caused by more than one type of bacteria.
It’s inaccurate to call Vibrio vulnificus the “flesh-eating bacteria” because it kills but does not eat tissue. The bacteria cannot penetrate intact skin but must enter through a break in the skin.
If the bacteria enters the body through a cut or wound, it can cause necrotizing fasciitis, in which the flesh around the infection site dies. Vulnificus means “to wound” in Latin.
Some infections can lead to lifethreatening wound infections in which the flesh around an open wound dies, according to the CDC.
Many who are infected may need intensive care or limb amputations; about 1 in 5 who get the infection die, sometimes within a day or two of becoming ill, the CDC says.
Vibrio bacteria naturally live in certain coastal waters year-round but tend to appear in a higher concentration between May and October. About 80% of infections occur in those months because waters are warmer, the CDC reports.
Most cases of Vibrio vulnificus occur when an open wound comes into contact with saltwater or brackish water.