With four people dead and five others sick in Kane County hospitals from an aggressive form of the bacteria that cause strep throat, health officials are urging residents to seek medical attention for sicknesses involving high fevers, chills, ear and skin infections, or pain in joints and extremities.
“Don’t delay getting evaluated,” Dr. Robert Tiballi, a Kane County private practitioner who tended to several of the victims before they died, said Sunday at a news conference. “People should not believe they have the flu and that this will just go away. . . . This germ can be overwhelming.”
Another person died in Lake County on Feb. 21.
There are no indications that the Strep A seen in Kane County was caused by exposure to one source of the bacteria, said Dr. John Lumpkin, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health. Doctors sought to allay fears, saying such virulent cases of Strep A are rare.
“We have something going on that’s unusual, but it shouldn’t be categorized as an outbreak or an epidemic, because we have three different organisms here,” Lumpkin said of the strains found in the Kane patients. Lumpkin and other health officials said that unrelated clusters of serious streptococcal infections are not uncommon and that it remained unclear what was behind the local cases.
Three men from Elgin, ages 90, 84 and 62, died in February of toxic shock caused by Group A streptococcal bacteria, most commonly known for causing strep throat. A Cook County man, 43, who was treated in Kane County, died of necrotizing fasciitis, an extremely rare manifestation of Strep A that invades open cuts and bruises.
A large outbreak of aggressive Strep A occurred in Decatur County in late 1997, when eight deaths and 12 infections, most involving nursing home residents, were reported. Strep A can be most dangerous for the elderly and those with weak immune systems.
The four Strep A deaths in February, the first in Kane County in the 12 years its health department has kept records, are the worst of nearly a dozen serious diagnoses reported in the area in 1999. The most recent case of a seriously ill patient was identified Thursday in Kane County, which was the hardest hit.
The Kane County number surpasses the county’s total for 1998, when no fatalities were recorded among 19 serious Strep A incidents and 1,862 strep throat infections overall.
“Nine cases in one area for one month seems pretty remarkable,” said Dr. Jack Flaherty, an infectious-disease specialist at the University of Chicago.
Illinois sees 90 to 200 cases of severe Strep A each year, generally with 5 to 10 percent resulting in death, health officials said.
Lake County public health officials have reported three cases of Strep A since December, two with toxic shock and one fatal case of necrotizing fasciitis, the rare “flesh-eating” bacteria. On Sunday night, St. Alexius Medical Center in Hoffman Estates also was treating an 18-month-old boy with the infection who was admitted Thursday.
Officials in DuPage, McHenry and Will Counties could not be reached Sunday.
In Chicago, Department of Public Health spokesman Tim Hadac said there are no numbers out of the ordinary.
“We haven’t seen any kind of significant increase yet,” he said.
Most streptococcal bacteria illnesses are mild, with strep throat the most common result.
But occasionally, the infection secretes a toxic poison that triggers an allergic reaction and rash. Such serious illnesses can result in toxic shock or necrotizing fasciitis.
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“Certain strains of the strep bacteria can be very invasive,” said Fred Carlson, acting executive director of the Kane County Health Department. “Once it gets inside . . . the bloodstream, it can be debilitating. As we’ve seen, there can be a very rapid deterioration in health.”
In the early stages, Strep A, which is spread through direct contact with respiratory secretions from infected individuals, or by contact with infected skin lesions, has “a lot in common with any other flulike illnesses, like muscle aches, fever, maybe even some respiratory complaints,” Flaherty said. A sore throat is another common symptom.
“You get really sick; you tend to get a high fever,” Flaherty said. “And you tend to get much sicker than you would with a typical viral infection.”
Strep throat generally is discovered through a throat culture and treated with antibiotics.
Muppets creator Jim Henson died of severe pneumonia caused by Strep A in 1990. He had complained of cold symptoms the weekend before his death but did not see a doctor for treatment until he began having difficulty breathing.
Doctors said that by that point, the bacterial infection from his lungs had begun attacking other organs and the illness no longer could be controlled with antibiotics.
In many of the nine cases reported in Kane County, the victims delayed seeing a doctor for several days, said Dr. David Lucks, infectious-disease specialist and medical director for the Kane County Health Department. Some of those who died were in the hospital for less than a day, he said.
Health officials said those sick in Kane County were evenly divided between the sexes and several had had previous medical problems that stressed their immune systems. But doctors said one man who died was “completely healthy and had no predisposed medical condition” before he got sick.
Officials would not release the names of those dead or affected in Kane County but said that one of the men had been living in a nursing home. All four died at Sherman Hospital in Elgin.
In addition to the four dead, there was one person reported sick in Elgin, one in Carpentersville, one in Aurora and one each in Lake and DuPage Counties. The latter two received medical attention in Kane County.
The Kane County Health Department is coordinating serotyping tests for the identified cases through the Illinois Department of Public Health and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
Physicians in Kane County have been informed of the Strep A cases so that identification and treatment of illness can be prompt and effective, officials said.