As cases of a severe intestinal illness rise across the Midwest, testing for Cyclospora has skyrocketed at Cleveland Clinic, which is one of the region's largest labs.
The Cleveland Clinic told me it's gone from one test a day to upwards of 200 a day. Tuesday, 300 samples were tested.
Cleveland Clinic shared a slide of what the parasitic infection looks like under a microscope.
A patient provides a stool sample through their medical provider to be tested at the lab.
"We tend to see Cyclospora cases more in the summer, but the magnitude is higher this year," said Dr. Anisha Misra, the medical director for Mycology and Parasitology at Cleveland Clinic. "The challenge really is that it can look like any other stomach illness, and that challenge is diagnosis. So, it really requires the right test to get to the answer. So, if your diarrhea is lasting longer than you'd expect it to, talk to your health care provider."
She said it takes about two weeks for these parasites to even become infectious once you ingest them. The parasite is suspected to be linked to produce, but the exact source has not been identified as of Tuesday.
"Once you've ingested it, it's sort of in your system," she said. "Typically, in an immunocompetent patient, your immune system might self-resolve this. So, there might be folks out there who we aren't testing because they're self-resolving, but depending on certain cases and the burden of the organism ingested and other factors, this might result in diarrhea causing you to come in for testing."
She said antibiotic treatment for this infection is traditionally Bactrim. Talk with your provider about what treatment might be right for you.
Misra said she and her team are working as fast as they can to turn around results for patients.
The CDC reported about 1,600 confirmed cases this week, with about 5,000 more that they're investigating.
Last year, around this time, Misra said there were about 249 cases nationwide.
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