Amanda Holden’s daughter Lexi was recently admitted to a hospital with life-threatening E. coli amid the latest outbreak, Daily Mail reports.
Amanda Holden’s daughter Lexi, 18, who was sitting her A-levels at the time, was reportedly on a ward for five days with Amanda and her husband Chris at her bedside.
While discussing the warning signs to look out for amid the latest outbreak, Amanda revealed to The Sun that her daughter Lexi had been suffering from bloating and stomach cramps.
She said: ‘For about three weeks, Lexi had been complaining of bloating and stomach cramps.’
‘She was not happy at all and in quite a lot of pain with her tummy.’
‘It was around the time of revision and her A-levels, so I was just putting this down to exam stress.’
However, Amanda admitted that after taking her daughter to her GP, who insisted on her doing some blood and stool samples, the results came back as a bacterial infection.
The star then revealed that while she was filming in Spain, she began to get calls from various government officials asking her to fill out several forms about where her daughter might have eaten and what kind of food they had stored in their home.
Stating that the cultures come back, Amanda revealed that Lexi has VTEC E. coli, which is a very harmful strain of bacteria that’s very rare in humans.
Amanda also told how perplexed she was by the news as she couldn’t work out how her daughter came down with the bacterial infection.
She admitted that she even had her rabbits and cat checked after the doctor asked if she lived on a farm or had any livestock, as the infection is usually affiliated with farmers.
The star also confessed that the antibiotics her daughter was given didn’t seem to be working and claimed her doctor called her saying ‘I don’t want to alarm you’ before telling her Lexi’s bloods were ‘through the roof’ and she was in danger of ‘contracting sepsis’.
The mother-of-two claimed that hearing the word sepsis was ‘terrifying’ to say the least.
According to Amanda, Lexi was the 113th case in the country but the doctor warned them that this was the tip-of-the-iceberg as more cases were to come.
Amanda then issued an update on her daughter’s health by revealing that she was finally let out after being in the hospital for five days, however, she has been back and forth for more blood tests.
A verotoxigenic E. coli, known as VTEC, is a harmful strain of a bacterium called Escherichia coli.
Most E. coli strains are harmless and live in the gut of humans and other animals without causing any problems. VTEC, however, is capable of producing a toxin that can cause serious illness.
Symptoms associated with E. coli usually present around two to four days after ingesting the bacteria and these may include stomach cramps, diarrhoea, nausea, vomiting, and fever.