Can You Catch the Stomach Flu Again From a Family Member

Norovirus is the most common cause of the stomach misery we telephone call food poisoning. iStockphoto hibernate caption

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Norovirus is the most common cause of the tum misery we phone call food poisoning.

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The misery began effectually 4:thirty a.m. with the sound of my 7-yr-former thumping into the hallway. He had already been up once, complaining of a stomachache. This fourth dimension, I scrambled out of bed and shushed him so he wouldn't wake up his 2-year-one-time blood brother. He looked at me and moaned. Then he puked all over the floor.

For the adjacent couple of hours, he ran to the bathroom to vomit every 20 or xxx minutes. In between, I lay in bed adjacent to him, encouraging him to residual.

"Poor Zach," I idea as he catnapped, simultaneously because the other downsides. We were bound to be cranky after starting the twenty-four hours and so early. Likewise, he clearly wasn't going to school. Would I be able to meet a deadline while tending to him?

Then came the beginning of my own personal hell. Around 6:30, I rushed to the bathroom for the outset of what would go hours of violent upheaval. I hadn't thrown upward since I was around Zach's age, during a flu and so horrific that I thought I'd since suppressed the power to vomit. But no.

Whatever had gotten into united states of america wanted out, and information technology favored both ends equally. Each time I entered the bath, I found it difficult to determine if I should sit down on the toilet or lean over it.

By almost 9 a.chiliad., Zach had relocated to the living room, where he watched Lego Star Wars cartoons, occasionally sitting up to puke in a pot. He was very casual near the whole affair. I stayed upstairs, curled up in bed, too weak to move, also worried to stray far from the bathroom, as well zonked even to read.

Equally I stared out the window at a squirrel hopping effortlessly through the leafless branches of a tree across the street, I wondered: What had I done to deserve this?

Determined to become to the source of my despair so I could prevent information technology from ever happening again, I called Kellogg Schwab, an environmental microbiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He offered a long listing of pathogens that tin cause gastroenteritis — the technical term for the diarrhea, vomiting, breadbasket cramps and other symptoms often described as "stomach flu."

His list included protozoa such as giardia, as well as toxins produced by bacteria that regularly go into rice. He rattled off common varieties of foodborne bacteria that sicken one in half-dozen Americans every year. Amidst them: Salmonella, Campylobacter and Due east. coli, which is implicated in an outbreak linked to Chipotle restaurants. (A more than contempo outbreak from a Chipotle in Boston appears to take been caused by norovirus, according to NPR's Dan Charles.)

We hadn't eaten at Chipotle, but contaminated food was ane of my starting time theories, a hypothesis I developed not long after the "only shoot me" phase of my affliction had ended around apex. Just Zach and I had eaten the enchilada pie I'd made for dinner the night earlier. And nosotros had fallen ill at the same time. I was pretty certain I had discovered the smoking gun of our gruesome mystery.

Every bit shortly equally I had enough free energy the next morning, I opened the fridge and took action. Out went all leftovers (enchilada pie first), everything in the vegetable drawer and any sauce that had been open for more three days. I even eyed the bunny graham crackers and wondered if bad germs could survive there, likewise. I suspected my beliefs might exist irrational, but it felt good to take control over an invisible threat that could be lurking anywhere.

Presently, though, came a new clue that bandage doubt on my smoking enchilada. The side by side night, my husband, Gabe, fell ill. "I'm dying," he texted me from the bath floor, where I found him lying around midnight. His peel was gray. He couldn't sit down upwardly. He could barely motion. Two days later on, we learned of 2 more cases: Zach'due south teacher and Gabe'southward colleague.

Without stool samples to cultivate for bacteria or clarify for pathogenic Dna or RNA, information technology'southward impossible to know for sure what the culprit was, Schwab cautioned. But, he said, many aspects of our experience are consistent with the dreaded and remarkably common norovirus. According to the Centers for Illness Control and Prevention, norovirus strikes about 20 meg Americans every year. By comparing, Campylobacter affects ane.3 1000000 people and Salmonella infects another meg. Those are the two most common bacterial causes of gastroenteritis.

Not everyone is every bit lucky equally we were. Norovirus sends tens of thousands of people to the hospital each year and kills as many every bit 800. Overall, estimates the CDC, foodborne illnesses kill about 3,000 Americans annually.

Notoriously affiliated with cruise-ship outbreaks, noroviruses (and there are 150 strains) crusade half of all food-related outbreaks, according to the CDC. Simply they can also motion amongst victims within well-nigh viii to 48 hours of contact with surfaces, food or objects contaminated by a sick person's vomit or stool. Symptoms strike quickly, often with projectile vomiting that doesn't always wait for one's arrival in the bathroom.

Once in the throes of a norovirus infection, you lot can't do much just ride it out and endeavour to stay hydrated. (If yous're immunocompromised, have a chronic status or develop severe aridity, Schwab said, it's best to get medical help). Mercifully, the worst is ordinarily over inside a day or 2. Other forms of foodborne illness can take longer to incubate and last much longer.

But what I really wanted to know, at least the side by side day, was how to avoid getting information technology over again — and how to keep information technology away from my 2-twelvemonth old, Ben, who all the same hasn't contracted it however. It can seem hopeless.

Victims shed the virus both before and later they take symptoms. It tin can stick around on surfaces for weeks. In one study, Schwab found that noroviruses can even persist in carpets and so become aerosolized when vacuumed, leading to infection through inhalation. Illness can come up with exposure to as few equally 10 individual viruses. Even getting it in one case fails to protect you from getting information technology again and over again.

"It is ane of the nigh infectious microorganisms known to humans," Schwab said, though at least he was sympathetic near it. "I'm deplorable y'all were sick."

And still, many mysteries remain. Did the illness showtime with contaminated food at all, or did someone bring it home from school or piece of work? Why did Zach and I get it at the same time? And why hasn't Ben come downwardly with information technology, even though he touches everything, sucks his thumb and regularly crawls on the floor, pretending he's a puppy?

For now, experts say, the all-time advice for reducing risk is simple: Wash your hands with lather and water, especially after going to the bath or earlier preparing food. Alcohol-based mitt sanitizers don't work too against this nasty illness. Only bleach does, and the CDC recommends using it to clean surfaces if norovirus strikes your dwelling house.

It's sort of deadening advice merely better than naught. After spraying downward my own bathroom and kitchen, I took a moment to recollect good thoughts about the researchers who met earlier this twelvemonth to talk about developing a norovirus vaccine. My queasy family and I promise they figure it out — and soon.

Emily Sohn is a freelance announcer in Minneapolis who writes regularly about health and scientific discipline for Nature, the Washington Post, Discovery News and others. More at www.tidepoolsinc.com.

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Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/12/09/458926533/when-norovirus-came-to-dinner-my-family-felt-the-pain

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