Cyclosporiasis cases are rising across the country. Cyclospora spreads when people eat food or drink water that was contaminated with feces. The parasitic infection causes people to have gastrointestinal symptoms. Avera pediatric infectious disease physician, Peter Lim, MD explains more about the parasite and how you can protect yourself.
What are symptoms of Cyclosporiasis?
A lot of patients may not have any symptoms; they may be asymptomatic, but a lot of times it presents as diarrhea, vomiting, and when it presents as diarrhea it is actually very watery. Some patients may have some intermittent fever, but a lot of patients may not have anything other than the GI symptoms.
Symptoms can last for a few days or up to several weeks.
A lot of times it’s usually self-resolving but if we suspect that there is a case of it, it is reportable and a treatment is available for it. We usually treat it with Bactrim, and it’s usually a 10 day course and patients typically respond to that treatment.
How can you reduce your risk of infection?
It’s a spore and some mechanical washing will really be effective at getting rid of it from our hands or fruits and vegetables we are eating. I would wash produce as much as possible, just making sure that there are no visible contaminants. I don’t know if there is actually a minimum or maximum time to say that our produce is actually really clean but I would thoroughly wash it.
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