Most cases involved meat packing workers from Central and South America, where routine immunization for rubella is not done. Some centers of small outbreaks occurred in children in day care who were too young to have received the rubella immunization, but had no known contact with the meat packing industry. Rubella in adults is not a serious illness per se, but if a women contracts the disease in the first trimester of pregnancy the illness can be devastating for her child. Congenital rubella syndrome can lead to deafness, blindness, serous heart defects, mental retardation, or fetal death. It has now been reported in three patients in New Jersey, which is now considered to be a new endemic area.
Symptoms can include fever, fatigue, muscle aches, headache, and joint pain.
Accurate diagnosis and complete treatment is important, because if only partially treated, the parasite can remain in the body for months to years, and the disease can recur. Complete eradication of the parasite requires treatment with two antimicrobials, clindamycin and quinine together. Infectious Diseases in Children, September 1999. They can carry Salmonella germs and have caused at least 223 people to become ill following clover sprout consumption, and anther 85 were sickened by alfalfa sprouts. Sprouts should not be served in day care centers or school lunch programs.