Short Stuff: Cyclospora

**Josh Clark** (0:04)
Hey, and welcome to Short Stuff, I'm Josh. There's Chuck, Jerry's here sitting in for Dave. So, this is the short stuff. Let's go.

**Chuck Bryant** (0:11)
That's right. Today, we're talking about the recent cyclosporiasis outbreak that everyone heard about, notably with like tainted lettuce, usually, is what you're hearing on the news, and Taco Bell was in the news because it turns out that the supplier that they used seems to have been ground zero for this outbreak. But we're going to explain what cyclospora is all about.

**Josh Clark** (0:37)
Yeah. This outbreak, as of August 13th, which is the latest data we could find, it's August 20th now. So, this is old.
It's 28,056 people have been sickened with cyclospora. I'm going with cyclosporiasis. It sounded like you gave the British pronunciation.

**Chuck Bryant** (0:58)
Sporiasis, yes.

**Josh Clark** (1:00)
Yeah. It suddenly sounded like you had tea in your hand.

**Chuck Bryant** (1:03)
Yeah.

**Josh Clark** (1:04)
So, 28,000 plus people have been sickened. Two people have died. And just a month before, it was at 9,481 cases. And you're like, wow, that's a lot of people. And it is. This is actually the third biggest foodborne outbreak in US history. From what anyone can tell, it's the biggest cyclospora outbreak in human history.
And even with those eye-popping stats associated with it, that 28,000 case number is probably just a fraction of the actual number of cases of people who have gotten sickened by, with cyclosporiasis.

**Chuck Bryant** (1:42)
Yeah, for sure. I think there are only 38 states reporting.
As far as reporting goes, it's like people who went to the hospital, and a lot of people just like wrote it out, I'm sure. And then even at the hospital, you have to have a special test to see if it's actually that. And not all the hospitals probably did that test, so they probably just treated people for dehydration and diarrhea. So it's a much bigger number than that. And let's talk about what this thing is, because it is a, not a plant, it's not a fungus or an animal, it's not a bacteria or a virus, it is a protozoan, and it's a parasite, and the human is the host.

**Josh Clark** (2:24)
Yeah, and it's not brand new, but the reason we can pretty confidently say that in all of human history, this is the biggest outbreak of cyclosporiasis, is because the first case that anyone's ever documented was in like 1978 in Papua New Guinea. And it's even newer here in the United States. The first outbreak was in 1995, right?

**Chuck Bryant** (2:46)
Yeah, in Chicago, only 23 cases. Then there was one in Florida the next year, about 45 cases. Those were raspberries from Guatemala. And every summer, basically, there's a little something, but nothing like we saw this year.
This stuff can live, this protozoan can live in rivers. It lives in water, drinking water, rivers, lakes, swimming pools. And it likes to hide in berries and leafy vegetables because there's lots of little crevices and nooks and crannies where it won't get washed out, even if you're rinsing your stuff. Also on knives and utensils, and also from unwashed hands.

**Josh Clark** (3:25)
Gross. Very gross. Just let's be clear, it passes through human sewage.
That's its mode of transportation, right?

**Chuck Bryant** (3:35)
That's right.

**Josh Clark** (3:36)
So that means that somebody had human poop on their knife or their hands, if that's where you got it. Yeah.

**Chuck Bryant** (3:45)
So we should talk about the life cycle, because it begins when it enters your mouth.
It is in what's the earliest stage, it's an infectious oocyst. Did you know how that was pronounced?

**Josh Clark** (4:00)
That's the British way of pronouncing it. I'm going with oocyst.

**Chuck Bryant** (4:03)
It is oocyst. I actually looked that up. And it is an egg that basically protects it from the outside world until it gets into the human system, where it latches onto your gut and starts a 14-stage life cycle, which takes two days to two weeks to incubate before it becomes an infection.

**Josh Clark** (4:27)
Yeah. The reason it takes so long is because that oocyst, is that what you said?

**Chuck Bryant** (4:31)
Yeah, with emphasis on the first o. Oocyst, sorry.

**Josh Clark** (4:36)
Oocyst. I like oocyst.
It's very tough. It's like a tough container, like you said, that protects the actual infectious part, and it has to break down, and it's evolved to break down in the human gut, thanks to your digestive juices and your bile, and the temperature of your body inside your gut. All those things come together and break that oocyst down, and now, all of a sudden, four sausage-shaped sporulates get dumped out into your gut and start going to work, and essentially making it really hard for your gut to absorb water, and because your body is trying to poop this stuff out, you have water butt like you have never had it before.