Many types of fruits and vegetables can be fermented into alcoholic beverages. Such was the case recently when prisoners in Utah
attempted to make an illegal beverage called “pruno”; however, someone added a weeks-old baked potato to the mix, letting a microbe into the party who was clearly uninvited. Consumers of the pruno began to develop difficulty swallowing, vomiting, double vision, and muscle weakness; three required ventilation therapy. No deaths were attributed to the contaminated beverage. A) What nervous system disease were the prisoners suffering from, and what was the specific organism involved? B) Based on your knowledge of this disease, what form of treatment was used to successfully avoid the worst outcomes of the disease in these patients?
Answer: beverages. Such was the case recently when prisoners in Utah attempted to make an illegal beverage called “pruno”; however, someone added a weeks-old baked potato to the mix, letting a microbe into the party who was clearly uninvited. Consumers of the pruno began to develop difficulty swallowing, vomiting, double vision, and muscle weakness; three required ventilation therapy. No deaths were attributed to the contaminated beverage.
Mammals undoubtedly play an important role in ecosystems by providing essential services such as seed dispersal, pollination and regulating insect populations, and reducing disease transmission [20–22] and there is some evidence that some groups act as indicators of general ecosystem health [23].
