Our E. coli lawyers are investigating an outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 linked to The Porch on Schenley, a restaurant in Pittsburgh, PA. The restaurant is located near the University of Pittsburgh at 221 Schenley Dr, in the Oakland neighborhood. 5 people have been sickened, 4 of whom were hospitalized.
The restaurant is closed today, but will be opening tomorrow, according to the Allegheny County Health Department.
“Consuming only a few cells of E. coli O157:H7 can cause serious illness,” said Fred Pritzker, who recently won $4.5 million for a university student who contracted an E. coli infection from tainted food served at a chain restaurant. Fred’s client developed hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), which caused kidney failure, severe hypertension and other health problems.
The health department is urging health care providers to test for E. coli to see if there are any additional cases linked to this outbreak. We would like to add that antibiotics should not be used to treat E. coli infections because medical research has found that they can cause HUS (Wong C, Jelacic S, Habeeb R, et al. 2000. The risk of the hemolytic-uremic syndrome after antibiotic treatment of Escherichia coli O157:H7 infections. N Engl J Med, 342: 1930–6).
