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Livestock disease strikes vacationing U.S. couple

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

By Andrew Bushe

DUBLIN — Tourists and picnickers tempted to use wild watercress to spice up their summer sandwiches have been warned by a medical expert they run the risk of catching the debilitating liver fluke disease — the infection normally associated with sheep and cattle.

The alert follows the first confirmed case of an Irish human infection since the mid 1960s. A vacationing 65-year-old Irish-American cardiologist and his wife became seriously ill after a trip to Connemara in late 1998.

New York doctors treating them had to do exhaustive international detective work before the illness was finally diagnosed last year and subsequently tracked back to wild watercress growing beside a Galway river.

Adding it to their sandwiches made the couple ill. A month after they returned home to the U.S., they developed severe night sweats, and suffered from high fever and weight loss.

As medical experts remained baffled, their condition deteriorated. Once the problem was pinpointed, however, they recovered.

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Professor John Dalton of Dublin City University, one of the world’s leading experts on the disease, was contacted by the American medical team after French experts suggested it might be liver fluke.

He believes the illness may be more widespread in Ireland.

"Who knows how many people have been sick from a low-dose infection,": Dalton said. "If someone caught liver fluke in Connemara, it would be the last thing on the mind of their GP.

"Anything grown wild, like watercress, in wet areas where there are animals should be avoided. If you eat it, there is a good chance you will be infected. The watercress in the shops is grown in glasshouses and is safe."

He said the new interest in organic farming might mean that people think the wild watercress was healthier. "It’s not," he emphasized.

Dalton said the small worm that causes the illness is present on vegetation in many wetland areas, particularly in the west.

Animals catch it from eating the grass that has the worm on it. The parasite invades the liver and then goes into the bile duct and matures and releases eggs. They are then passed onto the grass again, where they are eaten by a mud snail and the fluke emerges onto vegetation again.

"The snail is the vector in the same way that the mosquito is the vector that helps spreads malaria," Dalton said.

"Liver fluke is in all our wetland pastures from Clare right up through Galway to Roscommon, Monaghan, Sligo and Leitrim. There is very high animal infection in those areas."

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