A disease caused by a rare tissue-damaging bacteria is spreading in Japan after the country relaxed COVID-era restrictions.

Cases of streptococcal toxic shock syndrome (STSS) reached 977 this year by June 2, higher than the record 941 cases reported for all of last year, according to the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, which has been tracking incidences of the disease since 1999.

At the current rate of infections, the number of cases in Japan could reach 2,500 this year, with a mortality rate of 30%,” said Ken Kikuchi, a professor of infectious diseases at Tokyo Women’s Medical University.

"Most of the deaths happen within 48 hours,” Kikuchi said. "As soon as a patient notices swelling in (their) foot in the morning, it can expand to the knee by noon, and they can die within 48 hours.”

  • AmidFuror@fedia.io
    34·
    5 months ago

    I guess they’re linking it to easing COVID restrictions because hand washing helps prevent it. Did people stop washing their hands after using the toilet in Japan once the restrictions let up?

    • otp@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      33·
      5 months ago

      Did people stop washing their hands after using the toilet in Japan once the restrictions let up?

      Did…they start?

      Having lived briefly in Japan and for a while in Korea, most people left public (and workplace) washrooms without washing their hands. Even during the pandemic.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldMEnglish
        21·
        5 months ago

        You’re fucking joking. I give people the side-eye when they do that here in the U.S. and there are still plenty of people that at least go through the trouble of rinsing off their hands. Sure, most people don’t make sure to really get the soap everywhere like I do, but for most people to do absolutely nothing…

      • Drusas@kbin.run
        7·
        5 months ago

        This one’s kind of funny to me. I lived for two years in Japan not knowing that men’s restrooms typically don’t even have soap. Women’s restrooms usually do, and they get used. Despite me having lived there, it was my husband who taught me that there is no soap in the men’s restrooms when we went on a visit.

        • otp@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          3·
          5 months ago

          That was the weirdest part to me. In Korea, there was usually soap in the washrooms. But in either of those countries, you’d occasionally either find no soap in the men’s rooms, or you’d find empty soap canisters.

          Telling a staff member there was no soap got the reaction that a tourist in NA politely telling a police officer that they saw some litter on the sidewalk over there, lol

    • x3x3@lemm.eeEnglish
      161·
      5 months ago

      I was in Japan on vacation and no one washed the hands. Also soap was either empty or none existent

      • HBK@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        10·
        5 months ago

        Went for 2 weeks in March, can 2nd this.

        Not having soap drove me nuts! There was like 4-5 bathrooms I used that didn’t have it.

    • credo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      5 months ago

      Or because we are comparing rates now to those when COVID restrictions were in place?

      • AmidFuror@fedia.io
        1·
        5 months ago

        Maybe I’m not understanding you. Why not say it is up from 2021 and 2022 instead of it is up since restrictions were in place? They are linking the uptick to the easing of restrictions by highlighting that as a difference between now and then.

        Hand washing was encouraged and presumably increased during the restrictions. For any other country I would assume that also meant after using the toilet people were more likely to wash hands. But how much would that have impacted that culture in Japan?

    • Jin@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      5 months ago

      Definitely a thing that japanese men doesn’t wash their hands when visiting a public restrooms… At least what I have noticed

  • DominusOfMegadeus@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    18·
    5 months ago

    Pretty sure I saw this referred to as Flesh Eating Bacteria a couple of days ago. I’m sure “tissue-damaging” is just as effective a warning moniker to keep people alert.

  • where_am_i@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    31·
    5 months ago

    So, if it’s bacterial, isn’t all that I would need for that is a course of antibiotics?

    I mean, this desease is not a threat even if it starts spreading.

    • AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.netEnglish
      8·
      5 months ago

      It’s a bit more complex.

      The bacteria causing this (Streptococcus pyogenes) causes hundreds of millions of illnesses each year, ranging from the mild “strep throat” to the extremely severe scarlet fever. Whilst there have been a few outbreaks of antibiotic resistant strains of this bacterium, that doesn’t appear to be what’s going on in this outbreak, so thankfully the underlying streptococcus infection should be treatable with standard antibiotics.

      Unfortunately, the condition that’s actually killing people (Streptococcal Toxic Shock Syndrome (STSS)) is caused by exotoxins released by the bacteria, and killing the bacteria only stops further exotoxins from being produced — antibiotics can’t do anything about the exotoxins that have already been secreted by the bacteria. If you’ve ever wondered why we can’t cook spoiled food to make it safe to eat, this is a large part of why — exotoxins are often better at sticking around than the bacteria that produce them. It doesn’t help that exotoxins are often super potent toxins (Botulism is a particularly potent and well known example).

      It’s not clear what causes some cases of Streptococcus pyogenes to escalate and non-eventful cases of strep are common enough that treating every case with antibiotics is implausible. It’s tricky because if symptoms are severe enough to warrant a diagnosis of STSS, then things will have already progressed enough that the exotoxins present s risk to health even if antibiotics are administered. This outbreak of many cases of the severe STSS is concerning because it might indicate that the strep bacteria has evolved to be more deadly, but we really don’t know why there’s such a cluster of severe illness in one place.

    • Allero@lemmy.todayEnglish
      1·
      5 months ago

      You’ll need to monitor it and take antibiotics before symptoms kick in, otherwise it may be too late.

      In any case, the higher mortality, the lower the chance of spreading. There are and were plenty of viruses, for example, that have a similar mortality rate, but that’s exactly why there’s no outbreak - patients are easy to identify and isolate, and in the wild many die before propagating anything.