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September 8, 2010

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Experts blame crayfish for muscle-wasting cases

EATING crayfish has been confirmed as the cause of muscle degeneration suffered by at least 23 people in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, officials told a press conference in the provincial capital yesterday.

All the cases so far were due to Haff disease, which involves the swelling and breakdown of skeletal muscle and occurs within 24 hours of ingesting seafood, experts from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and local health authorities said.

The patients involved were all found to have eaten crayfish.

Twenty-two of them have recovered and have been discharged from hospital.

Wu Yongning, a research fellow with the center, said the Nanjing patients all ate crayfish four to 13 hours before they got sick and complained of muscle pain.

He said that all of them had been found to have elevated damaged muscle cells in their bloodstream, a result of the breakdown of muscle fibers and subsequent release of muscle fiber contents into the blood. The disease brings with it the risk of kidney failure and can be fatal.

Wu said Haff disease had been reported in the Baltic Sea area, the Mediterranean region, the United States, Brazil and also in Beijing but exactly what causes it is still unknown. No chemicals or microbes had been discovered in crayfish that would trigger the acute syndrome, experts said.

They suggested local food safety watchdogs keep an eye on the crustaceans, which are similar to lobsters but much smaller, even though tests in the province had found them to be safe.

Crayfish are also known as "mudbugs" because they can live in heavily polluted water but the breeders in Nanjing said the crayfish they sold were raised in clean ponds and lakes.

The outbreak of Haff disease due to crayfish was initially discovered in Nanjing in July.

Last Monday, a case was reported in Wuhan, capital of Hubei Province.

Some media reports quoted a business insider as saying a detergent used to clean crayfish was to blame. But food safety authorities said the powder could not cause the condition.




 

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