PARIS 2024, PREGLIASCO: “ESCHERICHIA COLI KNOCKS OUT, SENNA’S CHOICE LEAVES US PERPLEXED”
It can be said that French President Emmanuel Macron’s dreams of glory are drowning in the Seine. The poisoning of several athletes in the Paris river where Triathlon competitions take place is now a global case.
If the wrong Escherichia coli is ingested in quantity with contaminated water or food what can happen? “Urinary problems with burning and cystitis, especially in women. But above all, heavy gastrointestinal forms with pain, nausea and vomiting, high fever, diarrhea sometimes associated with blood loss”. Enough to “knock out” even apparently strong physiques like those of the athletes at the 2024 Paris Olympics. He explains this to Adnkronos Salute virologist Fabrizio Pregliasco, while the controversy over the triathlons organized in the waters of the Seine grows. After participating, the Belgian Claire Michel ended up in hospital and mysterious gastroenteritis (although without certain links to the immersion in the river) has also been reported for a Swiss triathlete and a Norwegian. Not to mention the images of swimmers vomiting after the competition.
“E. coli are part of our microbiota, but some can cause infections with debilitating disorders”, underlines the director of the School of Specialization in Hygiene and Preventive Medicine at the State University of Milan. “The incubation period is very short, from 12 hours to 2-3 days after exposure to the bacterium – he specifies – and this is why it is usually possible to identify the origin of the infection. It is treated with antibiotics, antidiarrheal drugs and rehydration, which is essential especially in the most fragile patients because the main risk is dehydration. The therapy lasts about a week”. The choice of the Seine for the open water Olympic races, observes Pregliasco, “leaves one perplexed in itself with respect to the quality that its waters can have”. And this, he points out, “beyond the controls”.
In fact, “it is clear that the analyses are periodic and spills, legal or not, are enough to change things. It is enough that along a tributary of the Seine there is a purification plant that does not work well, perhaps because in this period in that region there is an excess of people and therefore the plant is not able to clean the water as it should. In Italy, too – says the hygienist – I happened to follow a case linked to a temporary inefficiency of the remediation systems that caused a spill of viruses into the water. So it can happen regardless of the controls”, reiterates the expert, and “for an athlete it is certainly not exciting to find yourself swimming in a similar environment. Not even from a psychological point of view, in addition to the fact that while competing you can obviously drink contaminated water”.
“Escherichia coli is a bacterium that all of us, humans and animals, have in our intestines,” explains the doctor. Precisely for this reason “it is used as a reference parameter for evaluating the drinkability or suitability of water for bathing,” because “if there is E. coli in the water, it means that it has been contaminated in some way by human feces.”
While “the bacterium must be absent in drinking water, for bathing there is a minimum acceptable limit of presence in the water”, but as explained “periodic checks are not sufficient to exclude possible contamination”. “E. coli is a widely present microorganism and in its pathogenic forms it is also one of the fairly frequent causes of traveler’s diarrhea”, Pregliasco recalls. This is to say that the water of the Seine is certainly not the only possible route of infection for the athletes of the Paris Games. That said, ingesting a lot of it while swimming in a non-short race can be associated with an infectious risk.
“As always happens with oro-fecal infections – the virologist points out – the risk does not depend so much on the length of exposure, but on the concentration. In the epidemiological investigations that we do for example after a wedding, or any other convivial event, during which food contaminated with E. coli or salmonella was served, it is not that all the participants at the banquet get sick: maybe 2 or 3 end up in hospital, 10 have intestinal symptoms and others are fine. This happens precisely because it is a question of bacterial concentration, as well as the immune condition of the individual. Hence the broad spectrum of manifestations”.
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