French Woman Dies from New E. Coli Strain

Posted July 2nd, 2011 at 2:25 pm (UTC-5)
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An elderly French woman has died from a deadly kidney disease linked to E. coli bacteria, but not the strain that has recently killed 50 people.

French health authorities said Saturday that the 78-year-old woman died at a Bordeaux hospital. She had contracted hemolytic uremic syndrome, the rare kidney condition that the most seriously ill victims of the E. coli outbreak are suffering from.

But the health officials said that the E. coli strain she was infected with was different than the one that has killed 48 people in Germany and one each in the United States and Sweden. European officials have said that contaminated Egyptian fenugreek seeds planted at an organic farm in northern Germany – and then consumed as sprouts – are possibly the cause of these deaths.

French officials said the strain of bacteria linked to the latest death has not been identified. Seven other patients with the E. coli bacteria remain at the same hospital where she died, six of whom have been identified as having the same strain tied to the deadly German outbreak.