Home-prepared hamburger and sporadic hemolytic uremic syndrome, Argentina

RIVAS M, CALETTI MG, CHINEN I, REFI SM, ROLDAN CD, CHILLEMI G, FIORILLI G, BERTOLOTTI A, AGUERRE L, SOSA-ESTANI S

EMERGING INFECTIOUS DISEASES

Año: 2003 vol. 9 p. 1184 - 1186

1080-6040

Argentina has the highest incidence of hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) in the world, and 10.4 cases per 100,000 children <5 years of age were reported in 2001. HUS is the leading cause of acute renal failure in children (1); in 20% to 35% chronic renal failure develops, ranging from mild to serious, and HUS is the second leading cause of chronic renal failure (2,3) in Argentina. Recently, evidence of Shiga toxin–producing Escherichia coli (STEC) infection was found in 59% of Argentine HUS cases; O157:H7 was the predominant serotype isolated (4). Although outbreaks of E. coli O157:H7 have been linked to eating contaminated ground beef (5), the organism is rarely isolated from the implicated meat, and the sources of infection for sporadic cases have rarely been identified. We report a sporadic HUS case linked to the consumption of home-prepared hamburger contaminated with E. coli O157