Abstract
Between June, 1972 and March, 1973, an epidemic of idiopathic gastroenteritis affected 59 infants in the nursery of this hospital. Microbiological evidence obtained by prevalence surveys established an enterotoxigenic E. coli 0142/K86/H6 as the etiology of the outbreak. Clinical illness frequently was severe, resulting in 4 deaths and in intractable diarrhea in an additional 17 babies. Attack rates were found to be highest for low-birth-weight infants during the first two weeks of life. No predisposition was found to be associated with prior antibiotic therapy, gavage feeding, oxygen therapy, or birth by Caesarian section. Environmental microbiologic data incriminated the hands of personnel as potential transmission vehicles; hand carriage of the epidemic strain was not decreased by intensive handwashing with 3% hexachlorophene soap. Parenteral antibiotic treatment of affected babies was found to be associated with protracted illness, while oral colistin therapy successfully limited the course of diarrhea in all treated infants. Neonatal infection by an enteropathogenic bacterium not identified by traditional techniques and the resultant inappropriate use of parenteral antibiotic therapy are shown to be important causative factors in “idiopathic intractable diarrhea of infancy.”
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Boyer, K., Petersen, N., Farzaneh, I. et al. EPIDEMIC GASTROENTERITIS DUE TO E. COLI 0 142. Pediatr Res 8, 422 (1974). https://doi.org/10.1203/00006450-197404000-00492
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1203/00006450-197404000-00492
