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ocba - [ocba] FYI: Infant Botulism...

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Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers

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  • From: Blair Christian <blair.christian AT gmail.com>
  • To: ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org, durham-county-beekeepers AT googlegroups.com
  • Subject: [ocba] FYI: Infant Botulism...
  • Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 09:48:34 -0400

A coworker asked me about this so I explored a little...

Most honey has "Don't feed to infants under 1 year of age" on the
label. From what I can tell, infant botulism seems to be the reason
(infants don't have the ability to kill the spores). So I went into
the literature a little to try and find out more:

http://www.aafp.org/afp/2002/0401/p1388.html
(link stopped working?) It looks like there was a 1977 study that
looked for botulism spores and only found it in dirt and honey (out of
500+ samples tested). Also, ~50% of the reported cases were in CA,
and almost all cases were in CA, UT and PA (no percent listed?).

Global paper:
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/122/1/e73.full
"The mean age at onset of infant botulism cases was 13.8 weeks"
"Among those diagnosed in California, the proportion of cases that
included a history of honey exposure decreased significantly over time
from 39.7% in the 1970s to 14.7% in the 1980s, 5.3% in the 1990s, and
just 4.7% in the 2000s (P < .0001; Mantel-Haenszel χ2 test for
trend)."

Infant botulism still kills infants, but it looks like honey is less
of a source now than it was 40 years ago. But note that the results
for California may not be true in North Carolina...



  • [ocba] FYI: Infant Botulism..., Blair Christian, 06/27/2013

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