Deadly Strain

From birth to death, every normal person carries in his bowels billions of rod-shaped micro-organisms which the doctors call coliform bacteria. Usually these little "bugs" do no harm; in fact, their presence is considered normal. But every now & then, infants dying of epidemic diarrhea are found to harbor coliform bacteria which seem to be abnormal. Last week, every baby born in Port Huron Hospital, Mich., and every patient admitted, was being tested for a suspected killer of this type which had been isolated there, for the first time in the U.S.

Port Huron's experience seemed just like that of many hospitals,* but the result offered hope that other such outbreaks might be arrested or avoided. Last August, babies born in Port Huron's red brick, ivy-covered hospital and sent home as normal began to be readmitted with diarrhea. Some died. Laboratory tests indicated none of the three commonest causes of the disease (bacteria of the Shigella or Salmonella groups, or a virus). In October the disease invaded the hospital's nursery. To cut down cross-infection, babies were kept in their mothers' rooms. But by year's end the death toll had reached 34.

Desperate hospital officials called in Dr. Albert E. Heustis, Michigan's Health Commissioner. Dr. Heustis and his staff sent to Scotland and Denmark for samples of a peculiarly virulent strain, previously reported only from Europe and catalogued by Danish experts as O-111, of the normally harmless coliform bacteria. An identical form was found in the bowels of 90% of Port Huron's infected babies.

Dr. Heustis, "greatly enthused over the significance of these findings," believed that Port Huron's outbreak was licked. He warned doctors elsewhere to be on the lookout for O-111, and suggested the use of sulfathiazole for early treatment.

Last week, in 50 fecal samples from infants in the hospital, one of Dr. Heustis' bacteriologists found two containing O-111. One infected sample had come from a baby who had died of diarrhea, the second from a baby sick with it. The other 48 babies were in good health.

*Every year thousands of U.S. infants die of epidemic diarrhea. A 1944 outbreak in Texas killed 1,372 -- more than the nation's death toll that year from polio.

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