A STUDENT was forced to have both legs amputated after eating their housemate’s leftovers from the fridge led to devastating sepsis.

The student immediately began to feel ill after eating a chicken and noodle dish which had been bought from a restaurant the previous night.

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His symptoms started with a strong stomach ache and nausea before his skin turned purple and a friend took him to hospital.

He developed a severely high temperature, a pulse of 166 beats per minute, and had to be sedated, according to a report in the New England Journal of Medicine.

After the sepsis spread to his limbs, he was forced to have part of all 10 fingers amputated, as well as both legs below the knees.

The student, identified only as JC in a YouTube video illustrating the case, was so ill that he had to be taken to the intensive care unit of another hospital by helicopter for further treatment.

He reportedly had no known allergies, had received his childhood vaccinations, and wasn’t a big drinker, although he went through two packs of cigarettes a week and smoked cannabis daily.

“The patient had been well until 20 hours before this admission when diffuse abdominal pain and nausea developed after he ate rice, chicken, and lo mein leftovers from a restaurant meal,” the report said.

“Five hours before this admission, purplish discoloration [sic] of the skin developed, and a friend took the patient to the emergency department of another hospital for evaluation.”

In the YouTube video explaining the case made by user ‘Dr Bernard’, he explained that the severe symptoms the patient was suffering from seemed likely to have been an aggressive bacterial infection.

He suffered kidney failure and blood clots within 24 hours of eating the food.

Blood tests from the first hospital he visited found that his blood contained the bacteria Neisseria meningitidis.

Dr Bernard explained: “When bacteria is present in the blood, the entire body’s blood vessels dilate, dropping the blood pressure preventing oxygen from getting into the organs.”

As his hands and feet become cold, they are starved of oxygen

Dr BernardYouTuber

He went on: “Little clots form everywhere, as they get lodged into small blood vessels blocking blood flow.

“As his hands and feet become cold, they are starved of oxygen.”

When skin tissue is starved of blood, it begins to turn purple and rot, in a process called necrosis.

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What is sepsis

• Sepsis is always triggered by an infection – but is not contagious and can’t be passed from person to person
• It is usually spread through conditions such as pneumonia, UTIs, and appendicitis
• A common sepsis symptom is when the patient suffers a minor cut and the area around the wound becomes red, swollen, and warm to the touch
• Sepsis later affects individual organs throughout the body, and in severe cases can lead to organ failure
• When more than one organ stops functioning, the patient experiences cardio-circulatory failure leading to a sudden drop in blood pressure – more commonly known as septic shock
• Sepsis cases in the UK are increasing, with around 123,000 cases each year in England, and an estimated 37,000 deaths
• According to the UK Sepsis Trust, around 60,000 people in Britain every year suffer permanent, life-changing after effects

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Although the patient’s condition stabilised, the tissue on his fingers developed gangrene, as did his legs down to his feet.

He was forced to have part of all 10 fingers amputated, as well as both legs below the knees.

The life-threatening bacteria is known to spread through saliva.
JC’s housemate had thrown up after eating some of the meal the previous night, which JC hadn’t known before he started eating them.

Doctors discovered that although JC had received his first meningococcal vaccine before middle school, he never had the booster shot four years later when he was 16, which is recommended.

Dr Bernard described the incident as a “freak accident”, although it’s not clear what caused the food to have the bacteria in it.

JC gained consciousness some 26 days later and his condition improved, although with his life changed forever.

Sepsis is a life-threatening reaction to an infection, caused when the immune system overreacts to an infection and starts to damage the body’s tissue and organs.

It is the primary cause of death from infection around the world – more than bowel, breast, and prostate cancer combined.