Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium.
Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.”
People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the digestive system, Ho said.
Photo: Tien Yu-hua, Taipei Times
The substance that tainted the food could be toxin from poisonous mushrooms or one of two bacterium, Bacillus cereus or Clostridium botulinum, if reports of liver failure being a shared symptom are true, she said.
The bacterium thrive in temperatures above 25°C and in starchy environments, with the people affected reportedly having consumed pho or cellophane noodles, she said.
Poor food preparation procedures, such as leaving noodles at room temperature for too long could allow bacterial cultures to form, Ho said, adding that cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins.
The government is advised to keep in mind that deliberate poisoning can also be a possible explanation for the incident, she said, adding that national security agencies would have to be involved to deal with sabotage by mass poisoning.
Lee Chien-chang (李建璋), a doctor of emergency medicine at National Taiwan University Hospital, said that B cereus is a possible culprit for the poisoning.
Its spores and secreted toxins can survive being stir-fried and have caused several documented cases of poisoning, dubbed fried rice syndrome, Lee said.
B cereus poisoning is also difficult to detect, as traces of the bacteria are excreted relatively quickly, he said.
Huang Chien-hsien (黃建賢), chief epidemiologist at Shin Kong Wu Ho-su Memorial Hospital in Taipei, which treated a 66-year-old who died of the alleged food poisoning yesterday, said that the person had gastroenteritis, so stool and blood tests were taken, but the common bacterial or viral pathogens that cause stomach flu were not found.
Staphylococcus aureus in food can multiply and produce toxins that can make people ill, but the patient’s symptoms onset was faster and the symptoms seem more serious than S aureus food poisoning, Huang said.
Asked about the possibility that Bongkrek acid was involved, he said past cases were mostly linked to cooked food that had been left at room temperature for too long.
However, the bacteria is not a specific part of routine inspections, so it is unclear whether it is involved in this week’s case, he said, adding that Food and Drug Administration testing would likely resolve the matter.
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