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                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, February 18, 1993                   TAG: 9302180033
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A8   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

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DAY-CARE CHILDREN SPREAD E. COLI INFECTION

If a small child in a day-care center is ill with an E. coli 0157:H7 bacterial infection, it's a pretty good bet at least one classmate will also get it, a new research report says.

Spread of the infection among children in the study, all younger than 5, usually involved only one or two in each day care center. But authors of the report say that is still a serious matter.

"The number of children infected was low at most facilities," said the six researchers from the Minnesota Department of Health, "but transmission to even a few other children poses a serious risk because of the substantial [illness]" from complications of the infection.

Their study was reported in Wednesday's edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Release of the study comes - coincidentally - on the heels of a major outbreak of E. coli-related illness in Washington state over the past month in which an estimated 500 people, about half of them under age 6, were sickened. Two children died. About 92 percent were infected after eating contaminated hamburgers at Jack in the Box restaurants.

Officials say at least three children were infected in day-care centers. Another 42, most of them children, contracted the bacterium from infected family members. - Knight-Ridder/Tribune

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Memo: shorter version ran in the Metro edition.

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