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Hard-to-Kill Poop Parasites That Lurk in Swimming Pools on the Rise, CDC Warns

posted by chromas on Wednesday July 03 2019, @12:21PM   Printer-friendly
from the I'll-just-leave-this-here dept.

upstart writes for Bytram:

Hard-to-kill poop parasites that lurk in swimming pools on the rise, CDC warns

Outbreaks of the gastrointestinal parasite cryptosporidium have been spurting upward since 2009, with the number of outbreaks gushing up an average of 13% each year, according to researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The germ spreads via the fecal-oral route and causes explosive, watery diarrhea that can last for up to three weeks. Most victims pick up the infection from recreational waters, such as swimming pools and water parks.

The main trouble is that crypto is extremely tolerant of chlorine and can happily stay afloat in well-treated pools for more than seven days. Thus, sick swimmers are the main source of infection—often young children who have yet to master toilet skills and also have more of a tendency to gulp pool water. An infected person can shed 100 million parasite eggs in one bout of diarrhea. Knocking back just 10 or fewer eggs in contaminated pool water can lead to an infection.

A 2013 study released by the CDC found that 58% of tested pools were positive for bacteria typically present in fecal matter.

[...] In all, the CDC recorded 444 outbreaks, involving 7,465 cases, 287 hospitalizations, and one death from the parasite. The number of cases per outbreak ranged from two to 638. However, the CDC notes that the figures likely underestimate the number of outbreaks and cases given that not every state reliably reports outbreaks and many people don't report their illnesses.

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  • (Score: 2) by exaeta on Wednesday July 03 2019, @03:39PM (8 children)

    by exaeta (6957) on Wednesday July 03 2019, @03:39PM (#862753) Homepage Journal

    Now, I know people are gonna be like "we can't use copper, it kills fishes!" but seriously is this stuff resistant to copper? Humans/mamals are surprisingly tolerant to copper compared to most other organisms. If we don't plan to drink the water, we could put a bit more copper in it than ia technically safe for drinking water, but not so much that an accidental gulp would give you a serious case of copper poisoning.

    Copper could be scrubbed from the water by evaporating it when we don't need it and collecting the salts. It's non-volatile and doesn't leech into the atmosphere. As a plus algae wont grow because copper is rather toxic to plants.

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  • (Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday July 03 2019, @04:15PM (6 children)

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 03 2019, @04:15PM (#862770) Journal

    Generally, metallic antibiotics breed resistance much faster than traditional antibiotics, as specific resistances tend to be already present in bacterial(and protozoan) genomes and just with expression down-selected for growth rate effects. cite(see section 3.2) [nih.gov] There may even be epigenetic factors that can allow descendant bacteria to "turn on" that resistance fairly rapidly.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 03 2019, @04:27PM (4 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 03 2019, @04:27PM (#862773)

      Section 3.2 doesn't say that "metallic antibiotics breed resistance much faster than traditional antibiotics". Here it is in full for anyone else:

      3.2 Metal Resistance
      Metals have been biologically available since the Great Oxidation Event 2.4
      billion years ago (Chi Fru et al., 2016). Resistance genes to toxic metals and
      metalloids are believed to be ancient (Boyd & Barkay, 2012; Jackson &
      Dugas, 2003; Staehlin, Gibbons, Rokas, O’Halloran, & Slot, 2016); in silico
      evolution studies would suggest that metal resistance genes (MRGs) should
      be as ancient as metal toxicity ( Jenkins & Stekel, 2010), but this is difficult to
      prove with sequence analysis due to the timescales involved.
      Metal resistance is a common phenotype in many microorganisms that
      are exposed to metals in their habitats. Pal et al. (2015) showed that resistance
      genes to biocides and metals are present in the great majority of genomes
      isolated from different environments ranging from humans, animals and
      insect symbionts, to extreme environments, such as hydrothermal vents
      and environments polluted by discharges from antibiotic manufacture. In
      contrast, the presence of such genes on plasmids was considerably less common
      in all types of environments.
      Antimicrobial metals have been released into the biosphere in huge
      quantities through geological events for billions of years, and used by
      humans in medicine, agriculture and manufacturing, for thousands of years.
      There is data that associate metal contamination in different environments
      (due to either geological or anthropogenic activities) and the presence of
      MRGs (Farias et al., 2015; Poulain et al., 2016; Staehlin et al., 2016). Recent
      work analysing the occurrence of bacterial MRGs in dated permafrost cores
      and deep subterranean bacterial isolates links increases in the numbers of
      mercury (Poulain et al., 2016) and divergence of copper (Staehlin et al.,
      2016) resistance genes to global deposition of toxic metals due to industrial
      activity. This not only includes the rapid increase in metal production during
      the industrial revolution, but also dissemination of these metals due to inefficient
      methods of smelting in preindustrial revolution eras.
      Mercury resistance is especially important because some mer transposons
      can accumulate other resistances, and are therefore a vector for co-resistance
      (Liebert, Hall, & Summers, 1999; Summers, 2004). Mercury resistance
      transposons, which are closely related to modern Tn21-family transposons,
      but lacking ARGs, or the integron carrying them, have been detected from
      ‘preantibiotic era’ bacteria (Essa, Julian, Kidd, Brown, & Hobman, 2003),
      and from permafrost isolates from ice cores that are over 8000 years old
      (Kholodii, Mindlin, Petrova, & Minakhina, 2003). Therefore, the preexistence
      of these MGEs may also have contributed to the rapid evolution of
      resistance in the modern era.
      Predation by protists might also act as a driver for the presence of MRGs
      in bacteria (Hao et al., 2017, 2015, 2016). Metal poisoning is employed by
      protists to first inactivate and then kill bacteria (Hao et al., 2015, 2016). In
      response, bacteria have evolved metal detoxification strategies including
      copper/zinc resistance determinants and thus have selected for metal
      (copper/zinc) resistance to avoid killing by metal poisoning (Hao et al.,
      2016). Since these resistance genes would aid survival in protists, one could
      expect a higher occurrence of additional copper, zinc and arsenic resistance
      determinants. Thus, this could be an important factor/driver to select metal
      resistance or co-select antibiotic resistance. These mechanisms would also
      predate the antibiotic era.
      Thus, the ancient nature and broad distribution of metal ion resistance
      and homeostasis genes, efflux pumps, MGEs, and ARGs, suggests that the
      ‘tool-kit’ of genes and other elements required for the evolution of multiresistant
      bacteria already existed before the modern antibiotic era. This leads
      to the question: Has the development and spread of resistance to antibiotics
      in pathogens been further promoted by the exposure to metals? In the next
      section, we will provide a short historical reflection on bacterial resistance
      with a particular emphasis on the detection of metal resistance occurrence,
      in conjunction with antibiotic resistance.

      The noble metals all still make great antibiotic surfaces despite bacteria having been exposed to them for billions of years. What does that tell you?

      • (Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday July 03 2019, @06:22PM (3 children)

        by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 03 2019, @06:22PM (#862832) Journal

        I guess I should have been more clear as to what I meant that to be citing: the already existing genetic infrastructure for resistance.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 03 2019, @06:50PM (2 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 03 2019, @06:50PM (#862848)

          Do you have a source for the claim of interest? I would be surprised if that is correct, but maybe under some definition of "resistance" it could be true.

          • (Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday July 03 2019, @06:57PM (1 child)

            by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 03 2019, @06:57PM (#862850) Journal

            Someone excerpted it already in this thread and it's pretty explicit.

            "In response, bacteria have evolved metal detoxification strategies including copper/zinc resistance determinants and thus have selected for metal (copper/zinc) resistance to avoid killing by metal poisoning (Hao et al.,2016)"

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 03 2019, @07:11PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 03 2019, @07:11PM (#862855)

              I'm talking about:

              metallic antibiotics breed resistance much faster than traditional antibiotics

              This seems very unlikely, given what we know.

    • (Score: 2) by exaeta on Thursday July 04 2019, @02:17PM

      by exaeta (6957) on Thursday July 04 2019, @02:17PM (#863124) Homepage Journal
      Isn't the parasite in this instance a protist? I donno if bacterial resistance is super relevant.
      --
      The Government is a Bird

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 03 2019, @05:01PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 03 2019, @05:01PM (#862792)

    According to wikipedia, UV radiation or ozone treatment can work against this pathogen.