A 4-year old girl presents at the emergency room with bloody diarrhea, fever and vomiting. The childs mother reports that the child has had these symptoms for about 24 hours and she has not passed any urine for about 12 hours.
The child is enrolled in a day care center and the group had recently made a field trip to a fast food place to learn about different jobs. The children had a lunch of ground beef, fries and cola after meeting with different workers. This field trip was 4 days earlier on Friday. The child had a temperature of 39C and showed physical signs of dehydration. Blood samples drawn showed evidence of greatly reduced kidney function and lysed red blood cells.
- What is your diagnosis here? What microorganism is responsible for this illness?
- What pathogenic feature of this organism caused the severity of this problem?
- What were the critical features to your diagnosis?
