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SALT LAKE CITY — After her 1-year-old son was recently diagnosed with infant botulism, a Farmington woman wants others to be aware that babies can contract the illness from spores in the dust and soil.
Julie Powell said her son, Logan, started acting very weak just before his first birthday and had difficulty sucking and swallowing. She said he also had difficulty holding himself up, and his eyelids were droopy. After he became constipated as well, Powell looked up the symptoms online and found it was a match for infant botulism, a disease caused by a toxin that is produced when the intestines of babies become infected by the bacteria, Clostridium botulinum.
“He had every single symptom,” she said.
Powell contacted her family pediatrician who told her to immediately take her son to Primary Children’s Hospital. Logan was admitted to the hospital on March 22 and was diagnosed with infant botulism, which leads to muscle paralysis and can cause death if untreated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Botulism is commonly caused by ingesting foods that aren’t processed properly that contain the bacteria, the CDC said. The Utah Department of Health reports that infant botulism has also been associated with feeding contaminated honey to children under 1 years old.
However, Powell said she was familiar with these causes of botulism and she hadn’t fed her child any honey or canned foods. She said she was shocked when the doctors told her of another cause for infant botulism: inhaling spores from dust or dirt.
“I was totally shocked because I know it’s extremely rare,” Powell said. “They asked if there was any nearby construction that kicks up a lot of dust or a windstorm or something like that. … We had actually very recently been doing a lot of yard work where there were massive amounts of dust kicked up, and my husband had (Logan) in a baby carrier.”
Primary Children’s Hospital director of pediatric neurology Dr. Francis Filloux treated Logan and said there are typically 1-10 cases of infant botulism in Utah each year. Filloux said the majority of the cases are caused by the infant inhaling or ingesting spores from the dust that contain the botulinum bacteria, rather than from food.
“The spores of Clostridium botulinum are common in soil, and can also be found in a variety of foods and in dust,” the Utah Health Department reports.
The CDC reports that in the United States, around 145 botulism cases are reported each year, and of those, 65 percent are infant botulism. Filloux said Utah has one of the highest rates of infant botulism in the U.S. and said it may be credited to the dry climate.
“Some of the conditions that would predispose to that would be if there is a high-bacterial content in the soil in certain areas than in others, for example,” Filloux said. “And that does apparently seem to happen in Utah and then the dry windy weather that can presumably lead to dust and with the dust come the spores. So those two conditions together might predispose to a pattern, for example, in Utah.”
Filloux said there isn’t necessarily an area in Utah that has a higher spore content than other areas, but he said areas with a lot of construction may cause more dust that can be inhaled. The bacteria in the spores only affects children under 1 years old because their gastrointestinal system isn’t fully developed and won’t fight the toxins like an adult immune system, Filloux said.
Infant botulism is fairly rare, but is very treatable and has a high recovery rate with no lasting effects. Powell said after two days of taking a prescribed medication, Logan was “almost 100 percent.” After her experience, she said she wants to educate other parents.
“I would say, if you’ve got a newborn to a 1-year-old — even a little past a 1-year-old since mine actually was 1 when he got it — just keep your kids inside if they are digging up a hole next to you (for construction) or if there is a windstorm,” Powell said. “And keep a look out for those symptoms. Mention to your physician if you see that because the sooner you get in (to the hospital,) the better.”
