Fish-to-Human illness
- Thread starter toehead11183
- Start date
Fish's wastes alone make me think it's bad.
I posted this on another site:
Here is a blurb taken from a NY Times article entitled "Nemo Beware: Fish Tank Can Be a Haven for Salmonella," published April 18, 2006. They focus on cases in Australia, but state that the risk is basically the same worldwide.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/18/he...XZO4UCv096cBPg
Researchers reported in the March issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases on cases of bacterial infections serious enough to send some children to the hospital with high fever and bloody diarrhea. The infections stemmed from a multidrug-resistant strain of Salmonella paratyphi B that was traced via DNA analysis to fish tanks in the patients' homes.
"The fact that 12 to 14 percent of Australian households have ornamental fish and as many as 12 million American and 1 million Canadian families own domestic aquariums, together with the young age of most affected patients," make the risk of contamination from the tanks a matter of public health, the scientists concluded in their report.
The risk of catching salmonella bacteria from pet reptiles, chicks, ducklings and other animals has been widely recognized for decades.
Researchers agreed that beyond any immediate public health risk, a potentially bigger problem is the makeup of the strain of Salmonella paratyphi B making the rounds in Australian fish tanks.
The strain was loaded with five different genes that enable any bacteria carrying them to be impervious to at least as many different antibiotics.
There are still effective drugs that, if needed, will readily kill the strain, and it shows no signs of spreading to the human food supply or through it.
Dr. Lightfoot believed it came from Southeast Asia, which exports most of the world's ornamental fish. The use of antibiotics in the region's aquaculture tends to be heavy and not tightly regulated.
Since the 1990's, the researchers noted, multidrug-resistant versions of the same salmonella strain have been increasingly isolated from infected people in different parts of the world.
"We can't tell from our work if this multidrug-resistant strain is coming in through the fish, the snails or even the seaweed," Dr. Lightfoot said, "but we can be fairly certain that it's not in the fish food, and also fairly certain that we are importing it."
Here is a blurb taken from a NY Times article entitled "Nemo Beware: Fish Tank Can Be a Haven for Salmonella," published April 18, 2006. They focus on cases in Australia, but state that the risk is basically the same worldwide.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/18/he...XZO4UCv096cBPg
Researchers reported in the March issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases on cases of bacterial infections serious enough to send some children to the hospital with high fever and bloody diarrhea. The infections stemmed from a multidrug-resistant strain of Salmonella paratyphi B that was traced via DNA analysis to fish tanks in the patients' homes.
"The fact that 12 to 14 percent of Australian households have ornamental fish and as many as 12 million American and 1 million Canadian families own domestic aquariums, together with the young age of most affected patients," make the risk of contamination from the tanks a matter of public health, the scientists concluded in their report.
The risk of catching salmonella bacteria from pet reptiles, chicks, ducklings and other animals has been widely recognized for decades.
Researchers agreed that beyond any immediate public health risk, a potentially bigger problem is the makeup of the strain of Salmonella paratyphi B making the rounds in Australian fish tanks.
The strain was loaded with five different genes that enable any bacteria carrying them to be impervious to at least as many different antibiotics.
There are still effective drugs that, if needed, will readily kill the strain, and it shows no signs of spreading to the human food supply or through it.
Dr. Lightfoot believed it came from Southeast Asia, which exports most of the world's ornamental fish. The use of antibiotics in the region's aquaculture tends to be heavy and not tightly regulated.
Since the 1990's, the researchers noted, multidrug-resistant versions of the same salmonella strain have been increasingly isolated from infected people in different parts of the world.
"We can't tell from our work if this multidrug-resistant strain is coming in through the fish, the snails or even the seaweed," Dr. Lightfoot said, "but we can be fairly certain that it's not in the fish food, and also fairly certain that we are importing it."
I posted this a while back. Maybe I should make it a sticky.
Oddball i would thats a informative and well written article.
Oddball i would thats a informative and well written article.
