The Associated Press reports that a teenage girl from Kentucky is being treated at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville after she ate spinach and was sickened by E.coli bacteria.
The girl is 17 and is from Paducah, said Gwenda Bond, spokeswoman for the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services. The girl could not be identified by authorities due to privacy concerns. She is a vegetarian who had eaten spinach recently, said Jerry Jones, a Vanderbilt spokesman.
She has suffered kidney complications from the infection, said Dr. William Shaffner, Vanderbilt’s chair of preventative medicine and an expert on infectious disease.
Kentucky was the 10th state to report a case of E. coli, linked by Food and Drug Administration officials to bagged spinach. One death occurred in Wisconsin.