The painful breakdown of muscle fibres suffered by more than 20 crayfish eaters in Nanjing , Jiangsu , could be a symptom of Haff disease, a little known illness linked to seafood consumption, the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention says.
The disease is named after Konigsberger Haff, a small Russian town on the southeastern coast of the Baltic Sea, where it was discovered in 1924. It is thought to be contagious but can also occur sporadically. It affected more than 1,000 people in the decade after its discovery but has rarely appeared since.
People with the disease suffer severe pain but seldom die.
That is pretty much what is known about the disease so far, the centre said, quoting a paper by the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention at a press conference in Nanjing yesterday.
Professor Wu Yongning , the centre's food safety researcher, said 23 cases had been reported in Nanjing with symptoms of rhabdomyolysis, the breaking down of muscle fibres, within hours of eating crayfish, a crustacean similar to a small lobster.
Samples were taken from all the patients to test for the existence of nearly 1,000 types of industrial chemicals, antibiotics, hormones used in animal feed, sedatives and heavy metals that could possibly cause rhabdomyolysis, but none had been found, he said.