To the Editor: On 16 June, the microbiology unit of the Hospital of Lodi communicated to the local public health unit that Vibrio cholerae had been isolated and identified by standard biochemical tests in stool samples of an outpatient whose clinical data were unknown. On the same day, we contacted and interviewed the patient to investigate risk factors for cholera. The patient reported abdominal pain starting on 6 June and then severe diarrhea (10 to 12 stools per day) until 13 June; on that day the patient went to his general practitioner, who gave him loperamide and suggested a coproculture. The patient never traveled to cholera-endemic areas; did not eat raw mussels, uncooked fish, or vegetables of uncertain origin or from cholera-infected areas; and did not swim in rivers or lakes. The patient reported that he ate a seafood salad in the canteen of his work place on 5 June and that three out of the four persons who ate the same kind of salad also had abdominal symptoms. Subsequently, the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS) in Rome confirmed isolation of toxinogenic V. cholerae O1, biotype El Tor, serotype Ogawa, from stools from the index patient.

The canteen where the index patient had eaten the seafood salad was 1 of 17 supplied by a single cooking center that used a precooked, frozen, ready-to-eat product including shrimps, scallops, mussels, hen clams, cuttlefishes, and squid. Each product was cooked and frozen in the country of origin and mixed in Italy by an importer who packaged the seafood salad. Tracking the products around the world was difficult, but we learned that at least some had come from Far East countries where cholera is endemic. Approximately 125 servings of the same food were distributed within our local public health area (Azienda Sanitaria Locale) and more than 400 in other areas.

We performed an epidemiologic case-control investigation beginning 18 June involving 454 persons (94 who had eaten the seafood salad and 360 controls who had eaten in the same canteen any food except seafood salad); 37 (39%) of the persons who had eaten the seafood salad had had at least one episode of diarrhea or other relevant gastrointestinal symptoms, as compared to one (0.3%) of those who had not eaten it. We did not find symptomatic patients. The corresponding odds ratio was 233 (95% confidence interval, 97 to 560). No symptomatic person had to be hospitalized because of symptoms or required intravenous treatment; three or more loose or watery stools during a 24-hour period were reported in 24 cases. We performed coprocultures (using TCBS medium) between 23 June and 3 July of all 94 persons who had eaten the seafood salad. One positive coproculture for V. cholerae O1 Ogawa (same strain) was identified on 25 June; the isolation was subsequently confirmed by the ISS. This second patient with a positive culture worked in a factory in a different town. She had severe diarrhea on 6, 7, and 8 June. Her family doctor gave her rifaximin but did not ask for a coproculture, but a specimen was obtained on 23 June. She did not report risk factors for cholera infection, except having eaten seafood salad on June 5 in the canteen of her work place. The delay between exposure to V. cholerae and the coprocultures was longer than 1 week (median delay 26 days, range 19 to 31), and it is therefore not surprising that others who had eaten the seafood salad did not have positive results. Both the culture-positive index case-patient and the woman were recultured three more times; negative results were obtained.

The identification of this cholera outbreak is a sentinel episode confirming (1,2) that, if not adequately monitored, food preparation and distribution can cause serious infectious diseases in industrialized countries.

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Luca Cavalieri d'Oro*†, Elisabetta Merlo†, Eugenio Ariano†, Maria Grazia Silvestri†, Antonio Ceraminiello†, Eva Negri*, and Carlo La Vecchia*‡

Author affiliations: *Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche "Mario Negri," Milan, Italy; †Azienda Sanitaria Locale della Provincia di Lodi, Lodi, Italy; ‡Università degli Studi di Milano, Milan, Italy

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