AN OUTBREAK OF TYPE E BOTULISM IN AKITA PREFECTURE DUE TO GILTHEAD-IZUSHI

Botulism, very rare disease as it is, has long been reported in Europe and America, although no report referring to occurrence of this disease had been presented in Japan prior to 1952, when Nakamura, Iida and Saeki reported an outbreak of type E botulism at Iwanai, Hokkaido, due to herring-izushi. In the following year, another two outbreaks of type E botulism due to izushi involving fish were reported by the same authors. Again, early in October, 1953, the authors learned of the fourth outbreak in Hokkaido.Incidentally, concurrently with the fouth outbreak in Hokkaido, four persons of a family at Tenno, a small town upon the coast near the Lagoon Hachiro, Akita, developed symptoms of botulism and two of them died. The incliminated foodstuff, gilthead-izushi, was shown to possess type E botulinal toxin and therefrom a strain of Cl, botulinum type E was isolated. This occurrence adds up the total outbreaks of botulism in Japan, all of which were due to izushi involving fish and type E organisms, to five with thirty-two cases and nine fatalities. The data relating to the known outbreaks of botulism in Japan are shown in the table.