Calcium can help fight effects of E. coli, study says

Taking extra calcium before going abroad might cut short a case of traveler’s diarrhea.

A three-week study of healthy men intentionally infected with E. coli -- the bacterium that commonly contaminates food and drinking water in less developed countries -- found that high doses of calcium increased resistance to the infection.

For 10 days, 32 men ate their usual diet plus either regular milk products that supplied 1,100 milligrams of calcium a day or low-calcium milk products that supplied only 60 milligrams of calcium. Then they were given enough of a weak strain of Escherichia coli to cause mild diarrhea, which if untreated would last about three days. Those who had been taking the high-calcium products had less severe cases and recovered completely by the second day. The other group recovered the third day.

“The best protection is obtained by increasing the calcium intake before infection,” says lead author Ingeborg Bovee-Oudenhoven of the Wageningen Centre for Food Sciences and Gelderse Vallei Hospital in Ede, the Netherlands. Continuing to take a lot of calcium after infection also helps recovery. The study was published in the August issue of Gastroenterology.

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-- Dianne Partie Lange