'Swimmer's Itch' in the San Francisco Bay [View All]

[marmar]

An invasive snail recently discovered in San Francisco Bay has brought along its own unwelcome stowaway: a parasitic worm responsible for only the second known outbreak of "swimmer's itch" along the Pacific Coast of the United States.

Both the initial reports in the mid-1950s and the ongoing incidents of swimmer's itch - an itchy, red rash with pustules similar to those caused by poison oak - occurred at Robert W. Crown Memorial State Beach in Alameda, according to Andrew Cohen, director of the Center for Research on Aquatic Bioinvasions in Richmond.

"It's really a bizarre coincidence that it would strike the same beach twice so many years apart," Cohen said.

This month, Cohen co-authored an article on the outbreaks for the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases. In it, researchers detailed the most recent onset when 90 elementary schoolchildren contracted swimmer's itch in 2005 after a visit to Crown Beach for an end-of-the-year picnic. Seventy-one additional cases have been reported to Alameda County public health authorities since then. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/30/MNAT1FLPHC.DTL#ixzz114VuEkwv