The 54-year-old died on Thursday after contracting Vibrio vulnificus according the St. Louis County Department of Public Health.
A 54-year-old Missouri man died on Thursday after contracting a flesh-eating bacteria from eating raw oysters, officials say.
The man, who officials are not identifying, became infected after eating oysters he bought from The Fruit Stand & Seafood in the St. Louis suburb of Manchester, the St. Louis County Department of Public Health announced Friday.
The bacteria, Vibrio vulnificus, is typically contracted by consuming raw or undercooked oysters and other shellfish. Symptoms of vibriosis, the disease caused by V. vulnificus, include nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, fever and chills.
Death is rare after contacting vibriosis and typically occurs in people with weakened immune systems, according to the health department.
Officials embargoed all oysters remaining at The Fruit Stand & Seafood and are encouraging everyone who bought oysters from the shop to throw them away.
“There is no evidence that the business did anything to contaminate the oysters, which likely were already contaminated when the establishment received them,” the health department said in a press release, adding that they’re working on determining where the oysters came from.
V. vulnificus “can be found in warm, coastal waters, usually during the summer months” and is the most likely of all Vibrio bacteria to cause severe illness, according to the health department. It can also infect open wounds if they’re exposed to contaminated water, but does not spread from person to person.
The bacteria is responsible for more than 95% of seafood-related deaths in the U.S., where the mortality rate for the bacterial infection is around 33%, per the health department.
A study published in March in the journal Scientific Reports found that infections caused by V. vulnificus along the East Coast of the U.S. could double in the next 20 years, particularly as warmer sea surface temperatures enable the flesh-eating bacterium to thrive in waters farther north than ever before.
Study co-author Iain Lake, a professor of environmental sciences at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom called V. vulnificus “a nasty little bug,” because infections spread rapidly and the bacterium can severely damage a person’s flesh. He added that 1 in 5 cases is deadly and that many patients require amputations to survive.
To reduce the risk of contracting V. vulnificus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends not eating raw or undercooked oysters and shellfish and washing your hands thoroughly with soap and water after handling shellfish.
The agency also says to stay out of salt water or bodies of water that contain a mixture of salt and fresh water if you have a wound, and to wash any wounds throughly if they’ve been exposed to raw seafood or seawater.