New data out this week from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health shows the commonwealth has hit a 10-year high in cyclosporiasis cases.
It shows a total of 244 cases reported this year, more than triple the number last year and beating out any other year in the prior decade.
Thousands of cases tied to the parasite cyclospora were reported this summer across the United States, mostly focused in the Midwest, causing a firestorm on social media. Federal health officials tied the outbreak, which most often causes watery diarrhea, to iceberg lettuce.
Nearly 19,000 cases have been identified nationwide, leading to nearly 1,000 hospitalizations and two deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Still, even with the increase in Massachusetts, Harvard adjunct nutrition professor and Nourish Science CEO Jerold Mande points out other foodborne illnesses like norovirus are causing more of an issue.
“This isn’t a big problem in Massachusetts,” Mande said.
Mande also doesn’t expect cases to persist into the fall: The season for this illness typically wraps up at the end of August.
The risks of avoiding fresh produce, Mande adds, are much greater than the risks of eating it. He points out that about 1,000 to 3,000 people die of foodborne illness in the United States every year. The danger of diabetes and obesity from a less nutritious diet, he says, is much worse.
“Avoiding produce, even fresh uncooked produce, presents its own risks,” he said. “My food safety colleagues during this outbreak, when asked: Have they changed what they ate? I think they’ve all been pretty clear on, ‘No, and not for their kids. Not anything.’ Because the real threat to their health over time is not eating these kinds of foods.”
Mande hopes to see better investment in acute food safety, but that the real danger is preventing chronic nutrition-related illness.
The quality of the cyclospora data, Mande points out, comes down to if people go to the doctor when they experience symptoms like watery diarrhea, weight loss and nausea.
An outbreak has been tied back to iceberg lettuce, some of which was distributed to Massachusetts. But Mande says that likely part of the reason this year’s data is higher than usual is because cyclospora is top of mind, and more people are going to the doctor and getting checked out for their symptoms.
Mande says it will likely take months or a year to get the full picture on the summer’s cyclospora outbreak.
