NEWARK, Del.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SDIX™ (NASDAQ: SDIX), a leading supplier of rapid detection solutions to the $1 billion food pathogen testing market, today announced that the Company is expanding the development of its E. coli pathogen testing platform to include the top six shigatoxin-producing E. coli (STEC) types. Shigatoxins represent a group of bacterial toxins that are involved in the most serious forms of food-poisoning. These six shigatoxin-producing bacterial strains are the most common non-O157 E. coli strains causing severe human illnesses in the U.S. While only E. coli O157:H7 is currently considered a food adulterant by the USDA FSIS, the Company believes that these six STEC types are likely to be proposed for regulation as adulterants as well because they share O157:H7’s propensity to cause an often-deadly complication of food poisoning, a form of kidney failure called hemolytic-uremic syndrome (HUS) and are the detection targets of the draft method recently proposed by the USDA.
