The potential severity of botulism cannot be under-estimated, after several food-related cases – one in South America that resulted in a woman being hospitalised for a year and another more recent outbreak traced to a French eatery, linked to at least one death.
The latter case originated at a restaurant in Bordeaux, sparking international concern after 10 cases and a fatality, reports The Independent.
Sardines served at the Tchin Tchin Wine Bar are believed to have caused the illnesses.
In the other case, a 47-year-old Brazilian woman was hospitalised for more than a year with paralysis and chronic pain – and treated daily for foodborne botulism, after buying and eating expired pesto.
Doralice Goes said she bought the sauce on 31 December 2021, and ate it weeks later, in late January 2022.
“The pesto didn’t have an expiry date,” she said, adding that she got sick very soon after eating it.
“My body didn’t feel right, I was struggling to breathe, and my tongue was tingling,” she said. “I drove 20 kilometres to the hospital, parked the car, and then my body stopped working.”
Goes added that she lost control of her mobility once she had reached the hospital. “I couldn’t move, so I threw myself out of the car,” she said. “Then I saw an employee with a wheelchair, so I shouted, and they came over and helped me into it.”
She was vomiting and battling to breathe, and doctors immediately gave her a computerised tomography (CT) scan. A neurologist discovered she was mostly paralysed – she could wiggle only two toes when asked to move.
They diagnosed botulism, a rare condition that occurs when a toxin produced by bacteria attacks the body’s nerves. Botulism is often the result of bacteria found in food; they thrive in home-canned food, especially.
Frequently, it results from homemade food that hasn’t been stored properly. It can also occur when a wound is exposed to bacteria.
Foodborne botulism causes symptoms like dry mouth, difficulty speaking or swallowing, weakness on both sides of one’s face, double vision, blurred vision, trouble breathing, drooping eyelids, vomiting, nausea, stomach cramps, and paralysis; wound botulism causes some—but not all—of those symptoms.
While the symptoms of wound botulism may not show up for 10 days after a wound has been exposed to bacteria, the warning signs of foodborne botulism usually begin within 12 to 36 hours after eating the food.
Goes was given an anti-botulinum drug and physical therapy, after she and her doctors decided it was probably the pesto that had made her ill.
“It was one of the only things I had recently eaten, [and] it was homemade,” she said. “It seemed that a bacteria had formed in the pesto, which contained a toxin.”
Goes had to remain in the hospital for a full year after being admitted. “I had treatments every day,” she said. “I was…given dry compressions and electroshocks to relieve chronic pain, and when I got more strength in my upper body, I also adapted [to] playing table tennis.”
She was recently discharged after making much progress. “I have been breathing without help for nine months, which is a good sign,” she said, and is now able to go to the bathroom on her own – although she has to use a walker – and feed herself.
The Independent article – Woman paralysed for months after eating expired pesto (Open access)
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