Study of bug threat in north-east

Key role for University in project to reduce risk of e.coli outbreaks

By Joe Watson

Published:

Researchers at Aberdeen University are playing a key role in a new initiative to reduce the risk of e.coli 0157 in the north-east and to find out the cost of infections.

They have linked up with staff at the universities of Bangor and Manchester and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in a three-year research project that has been awarded £1.5million in funding from two UK government sources.

The work is comparing the impact of e.coli in Grampian, which has the highest recorded infection rates in the UK, and in north Wales where cases are among the lowest.

Lead researcher Professor Gareth Edwards-Jones, of Bangor University, said the research was focused on e.coli in the environment and countryside as opposed to food-borne infection routes.

The scientific teams are trying to find out why e.coli 0157 is a bigger problem in rural areas in the north-east than in north Wales, where the topography and livestock sectors are similar.

Prof Edwards-Jones said: “We are looking at how it survives and we are also quite interested in the role that humans may play. There are some suggestions that farmers may be carrying it but not suffering from the symptoms because they get exposed so frequently.”

The researchers are undertaking four surveys – one for farmers and another for rural dwellers and those who work in the countryside. A third for people who visit rural areas starts this weekend. The last is focused on food processors and those who handle food.

Results from this exercise, which the teams hope to complete in the north-east and north Wales by June, will then be fed into other work that is trying to find out how long e.coli 0157 survives in soil and water.

The London staff and the economists at Manchester are looking at the costs of infection both to individuals and the wider economy.

Aberdeen University research fellow Colette Jones said 260 farmers in the north-east had already completed the survey, which is considering public perceptions to the bug that is responsible for more than 300 deaths and 35,000 hospital admissions annually and which is particularly dangerous to the old and young.

Groups of scientists and researchers focusing on microbiology, modelling, policy and geosciences are involved in the project, which is looking for 1,000 responses to the surveys in the north-east.

Prof Edwards-Jones said the key aim of the initiative was to come up with a series of recommendations to reduce the risk of catching the bug.

He said while infections from environmental sources were rising they were still at very low levels.

The survey can be found at http://www.abdn.ac.uk/ ~geo552/ecoli/