E. coli outbreak in six states sickens 14, kills child

A lab technician holds petri dish containing dangerous E. coli bacteria from a patient at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf on June 2, 2011 in Hamburg, Germany.

/ Sean Gallup/Getty Images

(CBS/AP) - Health officials are investigating a mysterious and scattered outbreak of the E. coli bacteria linked to 14 illnesses and one death.

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said no form of contaminated food or other cause has been identified in the illnesses, which occurred in April and May. They are spread among six states.

Three people were hospitalized. One - a child in the New Orleans area - died last week. The Georgia Department of Public Health on Wednesday confirmed to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution the state has five confirmed cases with one sufferer needing hospitalization.

The outbreak strain is E. coli 0145, a dangerous but not well-known type of bacteria. The strain was fingered in a 2010 outbreak that sickened more than two dozen people in at least five states. The most commonly identified strain in North America is E. coli O157, and has been responsible for numerous outbreaks.

Some strains of E. coli are harmless, but others can cause serious and potentially lethal illnesses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. E. coli infection typically causes stomach cramps, diarrhea (sometimes bloody), vomiting, and mild fever. Some kinds of E. coli can cause diarrhea, while others cause urinary tract infections, respiratory illness and pneumonia, and other illnesses.

Symptoms typically appear within four days, though sometimes the "incubation period" can last a week.

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E.Coli O145 is one of a family of variants of E.Coli that contain a plasmid that makes shiga-toxin otherwise known as verotoxin. If untreated with antibiotics, it can lead to hemolytic-uremia as blood cells breakdown from exposure to the biotoxin. The plasmid that generates the verotoxin was isolated from Shigella bacteria which causes tropical dysentery in the 1970s by University of Hamburg microbiology researchers under a grant from the US Army and directed by USAMRIID. The bio-toxin plasmid was transferred into normal E.Coli to create a stable population of verotoxin breeder bacteria to help develop a vaccine for tropical dysentery. The US Patent Office granted a patent for the Shiga-toxin plasmid transfer process which is owned by the US Army.