Another fifteen years passed before scientists tracked down the ultimate culprit, the original source of some of the UTI-associated bacteria in the rectum: chicken. McGill University researchers were able to capture UTI-causing E. coli at the slaughter plants, tracing them to the meat supply and, eventually, to urinary specimens obtained from infected women.112 As a result, we now have direct proof that bladder infections can be a zoonosis—an animal-to-human disease.113 This is a critical discovery, since UTIs affect more than ten million women each year in the United States at the cost of
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