Meet Cryptosporidiosis: The Other Crypto You Should Know About
Cryptocurrency will take you to the cleaners. Cryptosporidium will take you to the toilet.
I was 14 years old and in high school when I first heard about Cryptosporidium. An outbreak of cryptosporidiosis was underway in Milwaukee, and hundreds of thousands of people were sick. My nascent interest in infectious diseases had me checking the newspaper and nightly news for any updates on what was happening. Those were the days before instant news and disinformation online.
The public health authorities didn’t know immediately that the cause of the outbreak of diarrheal disease was Cryptosporidium. All they knew was that many people were coming down with a diarrheal disease. For the healthy people, treatment involved medication to control the abdominal pain and diarrhea. For people with preexisting conditions, the disease was life-threatening and even deadly.
Not a Bacterium: A Parasite
The cause of the outbreak was hard to pinpoint. Routine testing for enteric (digestive) pathogens (bugs that make you sick) did not include testing for the parasite. Most testing is for bacteria like E. coli or Salmonella.
