A case report published this week illustrates the twisted damage that “flesh-eating” bacteria can cause.
Doctors in Florida treated a 74-year-old man whose limbs were infected by Vibrio vulnificusa common culprit of necrotizing fasciitis, also known as flesh-eating disease. The man survived his ordeal, although at the cost of losing half of his right leg. While these gruesome cases are rare, warmer ocean waters driven by climate change are causing them to occur more frequently in the United States, doctors warn.
Meat destroying bacteria
Flesh-eating disease is a misleading term for necrotizing fasciitis, although it has stuck stubbornly in the public imagination.
Warning: The graphic image appears below.
Certain bacteria such as v. vulnific It can enter open wounds and trigger a rapidly destructive infection of the skin and underlying tissue (including fascia). This destruction resembles half-eaten meat, although the bacteria themselves do not feed on it. v. vulnificA cousin of the bacteria responsible for cholera, it can also cause gastrointestinal diseases; These infections are usually spread by eating raw or undercooked shellfish. It is predominantly found in warm seawater or brackish water.
According to the case report, the man visited doctors three days after cutting his right leg when he jumped into the waters off Florida’s Gulf Coast. The leg wound still hurt and was widely surrounded by bruises and blood-filled blisters, and a day after the injury, he noticed changes in the skin on his right arm. Doctors rushed to remove as much dead and infected tissue as they could from the man’s limbs, while tests soon confirmed that he had contracted V. vulnificus.
Necrotizing fasciitis can spread quickly and become fatal, requiring urgent antibiotic therapy and often surgery. Even with treatment, about a quarter of people with this condition will suffer die. Ultimately, in this case, doctors decided to remove the man’s right leg above the knee, while skin grafts (taken from other areas of the man’s body) were used for his right arm. Six months after these procedures, both his remaining arm and leg had healed well, they wrote.
Below you can see the full, sharp image of the man’s right leg.
Rare but increasing
v. vulnific Infections are rare in the US, with only 150 to 200 cases reported annually to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But its presence seems to be growing over time.
A study from 2023 found that reported cases in the eastern US increased eight-fold between 1988 and 2018, for example. Extreme weather events, such as heat waves and hurricanes, can also cause spikes in cases. Florida experienced a record 82 cases in 2024, many of which occurred after Hurricane Helene. These weather events, along with warming waters in general, will only become more common thanks to climate change, which will likely bring with them more cases of v. vulnific with that.
“The abundance and geographical distribution of V. vulnificus “It is projected to increase due to factors related to climate change, including rising water temperatures, storm surges, salinity changes, and algal blooms,” the report authors noted in their paper. published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Some experts are now proactively trying prevent shoots of v. vulnific by predicting where it is most likely to appear in coastal waters, although these efforts have not received much support from the fishing industry so far.
