Your Family, Our Responsibility !
Escherichia coli (E. coli) is a bacteria that normally lives in the intestines of both healthy people and animals. In most cases, this bacteria is harmless. It helps digest the food you eat. However, certain strains of E. coli can cause symptoms including diarrhea, stomach pain and cramps and low-grade fever. Some E. coli infections can be dangerous.
People who get infections with the STEC strain of E. coli can have the following symptoms:
You usually develop symptoms of a STEC infection within three to five days after drinking or eating foods contaminated with this E. coli bacteria. However, you could have symptoms as early as one day after exposure up to about 10 days later.
Your symptoms can last from five to seven days.
Most cases of E. coli infections are mild and do not cause a serious health risk. Cases resolve on their own with rest and drinking plenty of fluids. However, some strains can cause severe symptoms and even life-threatening complications, such as hemolytic uremic syndrome, which can lead to kidney failure and death.
Some people, especially children age five and under, who become infected with a STEC infection (the O157:H7 strain) develop a condition called hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS). In this condition, toxins in your intestines from STEC cause diarrhea, travel into your bloodstream, destroy red blood cells and damage your kidneys. This potentially life-threatening illness develops in about 5% to 10% of people who are infected with STEC.
Early symptoms of HUS include:
As disease progresses, symptoms include:
If you develop severe diarrhea (lasting longer than three days or you can’t stay hydrated) or if you have bloody diarrhea, go to the hospital for emergency care. HUS, if it develops, occurs an average of 7 days after your first symptoms occur. It is treated with IV fluids, blood transfusions and dialysis (for a short period of time).
Technically, you develop an E. coli infection by ingesting (taking in by mouth) certain strains of E. coli bacteria. The bacteria travel down your digestive tract, releases a destructive toxin, called the Shiga toxin, which damages the lining of your small intestine. The growing infection causes your symptoms.
You come into contact and swallow E. coli by eating contaminated food, drinking contaminated water or by touching your mouth with your hands that are contaminated with E. coli bacteria.
Contaminated foods
Contaminated water
Contaminated hands
When you hear the word “contagious,” you might immediately think of a cold or the flu – illnesses you can get from breathing in bacteria or viruses lingering in the air of a sick person’s cough or sneeze.
E. coli isn’t an airborne illness. It’s usually spread by eating contaminated food or drinking contaminated water that contains illness-producing strains of E. coli. (Remember not all strains of E. coli are harmful.)
E. coli can, however, be contagious and spread from person to person by the “oral-fecal route.” This means that harmful strains of E. coli are spread when people don’t wash their hands thoroughly with soap and water after they use the bathroom or otherwise touch poop (after changing baby diapers or older person’s incontinence undergarments, or petting zoo or farm animals that may have soiled fur) and they touch other people. People then get the invisible E. coli on their hands and swallow it when it is transferred from their hands to the food they eat or from putting their fingers in their mouth. E. coli spreads from person to person this way in settings such as day care centers and nursing homes.
Fortunately, most E. coli infections go away on their own. You can help yourself manage E. coli infection by drinking plenty of fluids to replace what you’ve lost through diarrhea and/or vomiting. Also, get as much rest as possible.
Antibiotics are usually not given for STEC O157 infection because they can make your illness worse and put you at risk for hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS). Also, don’t take any medicines to stop diarrhea (such as bismuth subsalicylate [Pepto-Bismol®, Kaopectate®] or loperamide [Imodium®]), because it could keep the E. coli bacteria in your body and increase your chance of HUS.
You should start to feel better about five to seven days from the time you first developed symptoms.
See your healthcare provider about an E. coli infection if:
You have diarrhea for more than three days and:
STEC infections are diagnosed by sending a sample of your poop to a laboratory. Many labs can test for both STEC O157 and non-O157 STEC bacterial infections.
Call your healthcare provider’s office. They may have you come in for an office visit and give you a sterile stool collection cup and specific directions to follow for how to collect a stool sample. They may also email specific instructions for collecting a sample at home.
Some general instructions for collecting a stool sample at home include:
Most laboratories report back the results within two to four days. Your healthcare provider will call you with the results as soon as they become available or you may be notified of your results electronically if you have an online medical record set up with your doctor or healthcare facility.