fight against dysentery
Why young people in the US wantonly drink “bacterial smoothies” and risk life-threatening diarrhea
Bacterial dysentery is highly contagious and can be fatal. (icon picture)
© Patrick Daxenbichler / Picture Alliance
It’s a drink that’s almost certainly going to cause diarrhea. Bad diarrhea. A group of young people drank it anyway. Jake Eberts is one of them. He did it for money – and to save the lives of others.
He knew if he drank that shot, there was a high probability it would end up in the toilet. He also knew that he would probably have diarrhea, which could become life-threatening. Because this cloudy, salty drink was mixed with bacteria that can cause dysentery. Jake Eberts knew all this – and drank anyway. According to the 26-year-old, the worst eight hours of his life followed.
Behind the action, which sounds like a test of courage at Jackass, is serious research. Eberts is one of a group of 16 young, healthy Americans who accepted becoming ill themselves as part of a 12-day study at the University of Maryland in order to save the lives of others. Weeks before the subjects took the bacterial drink, they had been vaccinated twice – one with an investigational vaccine, the other with a placebo. What happened then, Eberts documented in detail on his Twitter page.
The cramps started about 40 hours after he drank his “Shigella smoothie,” as he calls the liquid. He suffered from chills. His health quickly deteriorated. He got fever and diarrhea, bloody stool. Every trip to the toilet was a Herculean task. “Every time I moved in the bathroom to get up to wash my hands or get a paper towel, I had to get back on the floor and just sit there for five minutes,” Eberts told Insider.
Dangerous diarrheal disease
Shigella is one of the enterobacteria. They can cause the infectious disease shigellosis. The transmission takes place, writes the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), “faecal-oral through contact or smear infection in the context of close personal contact, for example in kindergarten or in the common household, or through contaminated food, (drinking) water or everyday objects. […] Shigella can trigger clinical symptoms even at a minimal dose taken orally (below 100 germs).”
Infection primarily affects the gut. Symptoms usually appear 12 to 96 hours after infection. The classic course of the disease, which is not often observed, usually begins with fever, headache and abdominal cramps, followed by watery diarrhea and bloody-mucous excretions. The latter corresponds to the clinical picture of dysentery, also called Shigellen dysentery.
According to the RKI, the rule is mild progressive forms with watery and soft stools. People with a weakened immune system, the elderly or those with malnutrition are “more often affected by severe to fulminant courses”. Every year, hundreds of thousands die around the world as a result of Shigella infection. It is considered the second most dangerous diarrheal disease after rotavirus. Shigellosis occurs worldwide, but more frequently in warmer countries. Most Shigellosis are brought to Germany by travellers, who have often been infected in countries such as Turkey, Egypt, Morocco and India. According to Statista, between the years 2001 and 2019 the number of shigellosis diseases in Germany fell from 1611 to 627 cases.
“I felt miserable”
There is currently no approved vaccine against the bacterium. But a team of researchers from the Institut Pasteur in France has been working to change that for several years. The vaccine was first tested in Israel before the study started in Maryland with adults and another in Kenya with young children.
To find out how effective the vaccine developed and the immune response is, blood, feces and urine samples were taken from the study participants in Maryland and the antibody count was measured. Wilbur Chen, who is leading the study at the University of Maryland, hopes the vaccine will provide 70 percent protection against serious illness. If at least a protection rate of 50 percent is not achieved, Chen told “Insider”, “then I think we have a vaccine that unfortunately really fails”.
Jake Eberts suffered one of the most severe cases of diarrhea in the study. He had to be given fluid infusions, and later he also got an antibiotic. After that, however, his health improved again within a few hours. “I was exhausted and miserable,” he said. But he wasn’t afraid. “I knew this is something I signed up for and it will pass and I’m not going to die or anything.” And he would do it again. However, only in the knowledge that it is for a good cause and for money. Because Eberts was paid for his participation. “I don’t want to play Mother Teresa here – I wouldn’t have done it for nothing,” he said. Participation in the vaccine study earned him the equivalent of around 6,600 euros.