WEDNESDAY, June 18 (HealthDay News) -- The number of people known to have fallen ill after eating salmonella-tainted tomatoes has now jumped to 383 in 30 states plus the District of Columbia, U.S. health officials announced Wednesday afternoon.

"The marked increase is not due to new infections but mainly because some states improved surveillance in response to this outbreak and laboratory identification of many other previously submitted strains has now been completed," said Casey Barton Behravesh, an epidemiologist with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, during a teleconference. "We now have reports of at least 48 persons being hospitalized due to this illness."

The ages of the patients ranges from under 1 to 88 years old, and 47 percent of them are female. The most recent onset of illness was June 5; the outbreak was first discovered in April.

"We are continuing to receive reports of ill people," said Dr. Robert Tauxe, deputy director of the CDC's division of foodborne, bacterial and mycotic diseases. "We do not think the outbreak is over."

Tauxe also could not say if the outbreak had peaked yet, given that some states are still catching up on necessary laboratory work. "I would say that the majority of new cases had onset around three to four weeks ago, but some new cases onset in the last two to three weeks that might suggest that there are still some cases continuing to occur," he said. "It's too early to call the peak, and we certainly cannot say that it's over."

Officials have still not zeroed in on the exact source of the contamination, although tomatoes from Mexico and Florida are the likely culprits, said Dr. David Acheson, associate commissioner for food protection at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Still, Acheson seemed less certain than he has in the past that the exact source would ever be identified. "I have to acknowledge that we may not ultimately know the farm where these came from," he said. "But we're continuing to go flat-out, assuming we are going to get to that point."

A cluster of nine cases still holds promise for helping to break the deadlock. But a second patient has retracted the original information he or she gave the FDA on where contaminated tomatoes were eaten, basically rendering that particular "trace-back" effort worthless, officials acknowledged.

Acheson would not confirm that this cluster of nine cases was the same as a cluster being investigated in Chicago that originated at the Adobo Grill restaurant.

Meanwhile, restaurants and supermarkets across the country are starting to sell and serve tomatoes again. The Chicago Sun-Times reported that McDonald's restaurants are bringing back some tomatoes, as is Wendy's and Burger King. Yum Brands, which owns Taco Bell, KFC and Pizza Hut, is also bringing back tomatoes from "safe" areas, the newspaper said.

"I can't speak to why one chain is going back and one isn't," Acheson said. "From a food-safety perspective, I'd like retailers to put tomatoes on the menu but make sure they come from a safe place. They do need to know their suppliers."

Acheson also said that the FDA has asked for authority to take action to prevent future outbreaks. "We have put the word out that we need authority to require preventative control," he said. "Exactly what that would look like would depend exactly on what the legislation looked like. But at a high level, we feel we need preventative control for high-risk foods, and tomatoes and other types of fresh produce would be part of that."

Currently, the U.S. agriculture industry relies on a set of voluntary "good practices" to ensure food safety.

"We have asked for authorities, and we don't yet have them. What we're looking for here is mandatory. There would be no voluntary about it," Acheson said.

In other developments, New York City has linked seven cases of illness to salmonella-contaminated raw tomatoes, according to Bloomberg.

And the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported on its Web site that more than 8,000 people may have actually been sickened in this salmonella outbreak. The explanation: "Based on earlier extensive studies and extrapolations, the CDC has estimated that for every one case of salmonellosis reported, there are 38 additional cases that are not reported," according to the newspaper site.

Salmonella is a bacteria that can cause bloody diarrhea in humans. Some 40,000 cases of salmonellosis are reported in the United States each year, although the CDC estimates that because milder cases are not diagnosed or reported, the actual number of infections may be 30 or more times greater. Approximately 600 people die each year after being infected.

More information

Visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for more on the salmonella outbreak.

WEDNESDAY, June 18 (HealthDay News) -- If you sidle up to a bar and assume one drink an hour won't make you legally drunk, think again. A new study finds that bartenders pack a lot more booze into common drinks than many people realize.

Researchers visited 80 bars and restaurants in Northern California last year and found that glasses of wine and spirits are often 50 percent larger than the "standard" size used in guidelines. That means people who follow recommendations about avoiding more than one drink an hour may be getting more booze than they bargained for, the study found.

"These things can creep up on someone without their being aware," said study lead author William Kerr, a senior scientist at the Public Health Institute's Alcohol Research Group. "There should be caution."

Kerr and his colleagues launched their study as part of ongoing research into alcohol consumption. "It occurred to me that we didn't know much about what people meant when they said they had a drink," he said.

The researchers visited 80 randomly selected drinking establishments in Northern California, including some in the major cities of San Francisco, Oakland and Sacramento. Some were bars, while others were restaurants.

The researchers typically visited in groups of three to four and bought a round of drinks. Then one member of the group would use a cylinder to measure the drinks. Sometimes the researchers would duck into the restroom so they wouldn't be noticed. Bartenders occasionally noticed what the researchers were doing and spoke up, but they never made a major fuss, Kerr said.

An analysis of 480 drinks found that wine, beer and mixed drinks were often 50 percent larger than a "standard" drink. The average glasses of wine and mixed drinks were 42 percent to 43 percent larger, and the average draft beer was 22 percent larger. (Bottled beers weren't measured.)

Glasses of wine, meanwhile, typically packed more alcohol per volume -- 14 percent instead of 12 percent -- than those used to define a standard drink.

Factors like the type of establishment, the region of Northern California and the gender of the bartender didn't seem to affect the sizes of the drinks, Kerr said.

The findings were expected to be published in the September issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research and are available online.

Some people use the definition of a standard drink to figure out how much they can drink before becoming drunk.

"If the chart says you can have five standard drinks (before you get drunk), you can only have three to four of these actual drinks," Kerr said.

Dwight Heath, a professor of anthropology at Brown University who studies alcohol consumption, said the study "points out a dirty little secret of alcohol research: The definition of 'standard drink' is inaccurate and out-of-date."

Researchers have failed to recognize and adjust to "changes in culture," Heath said.

More information

Learn more about alcohol and potential health risks at Pace University  .

SUNDAY, June 15 (HealthDay News) -- It's rare these days to see a teenager without a cell phone in hand, texting for hours at a time, seemingly without health consequences. But, when older folks attempts to spend the day e-mailing, instant messaging and surfing the Web on a handheld device, repetitive stress injuries -- such as "Blackberry thumb" -- are much more likely to occur.

Dubbed "Blackberry thumb" because of the popularity of that particular model of wireless personal digital assistant (PDA), this repetitive stress injury occurs because these devices rely almost solely on the use of your thumbs for typing, instead of all your fingers.

Any device that relies on the thumbs for typing can cause this type of injury because the thumbs simply weren't designed for such use.

"Blackberries and other PDAs can cause tendonitis from working in such a small space with the thumbs," explained Kristen Crowe, a certified hand therapist with Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich. "The problem is that people are doing the same activity for long periods of time that the body just wasn't meant to do. Teens seem to do OK with it. It's around age 40 or 50 the 'itises', [such as tendonitis], start to crop up."

Margot Miller, president of the American Physical Therapy Association's Occupational Health Special Interest Group, added: "Because the keyboard of the PDA is so small, and because the thumb, which is the least dexterous part of the hand, is overtaxed, the risk of injury just skyrockets."

"The use of PDAs is no longer limited to the eight hours spent in the workplace," Miller said. "More and more, people are depending on these devices to stay in touch with friends and family before and after the workday and on the weekends, as well as having access to work when they leave the office. That is where the heart of the problem lies." .

Symptoms of "Blackberry thumb" include pain and numbness in the thumbs and joints of the hand.

Most people who rely on PDAs wouldn't readily give them up, even for an injury, so it's fortunate that there are treatments available.

Crowe's first suggestion is to take a break from the device for just a little while. "If it's painful, switch your activity until you feel rested. Don't try to work through pain thinking it will go away. Take a vacation if you can," she recommended.

"Try to do more on your computer. Don't write phone books on your PDA. Limit yourself to 'yes' or 'no' answers when you can," advised Dr. Charles Leinberry Jr., a hand and wrist specialist at the Rothman Institute at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.

Leinberry, who is also an assistant clinical professor of orthopedic surgery at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, said that splinting, usually with a custom-made splint worn while you're sleeping, can relieve some of the pressure on your thumb and other joints, and improve your symptoms.

Both Crowe and Leinberry said it's important to pay attention to your workspace ergonomics to make sure you're not putting any extra stress on your thumb and hands. Crowe added that many times, small changes in the work area can have a big impact on your health.

"Getting a new office or doing more work at home -- possibly at the dining room table -- can throw off your posture," she said, which can result in muscle and nerve disorders like tendonitis or carpal tunnel syndrome.

Crowe also recommended icing the injured area. And, both experts suggested doing strengthening exercises once the pain subsides. Ask your physician or physical or occupational therapist to show you what to do.

In the worst cases, Leinberry said that cortisone shots or surgery can be helpful.

But, he also pointed out, most people never have a significant problem.

"Just use common sense. Be smart with your use -- shorten answers and just use the devices when you need to. And, if you feel discomfort, stop using it and get in to see a physician," he said.

More information

To learn more about preventing repetitive stress injuries to the hand, visit the Cleveland Clinic  .

THURSDAY, June 5 (HealthDay News) -- Researchers say they can cheaply and easily track how effective some cancer drugs are at cutting off a tumor's blood supply by using the same gene that gives fireflies their distinctive glow.

Using a technique called bioluminescence imaging (BLI), the University of Teexas Southwestern Medical Center team added a molecule substrate called luciferin to the bloodstream of mice with human breast cancer tumors. The tumors had been altered to carry the firefly gene, so they would emit light when the luciferin reached them.

Using special light-detecting equipment, the researchers detected a correlation between how much light was emitted and the tumors' growth. The light emission fell drastically after a drug designed to disrupt the blood flow to the cancer cells was given to the mice.

"What we've done is offer proof-of-concept that BLI may be an effective and cheaper method to assess drug development and effectiveness," study senior author Dr. Ralph Mason, director of the UT Southwestern Cancer Imaging Center, said in a prepared statement. "The technique is not intended to be used for imaging tumors or diagnosing cancer in humans, but it potentially allows us to do much more efficient preclinical experiments."

He stressed that the effectiveness of BLI would depend greatly on the tumor location.

The findings are available online and were expected to be published in a future issue of The Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.

BLI has some advantages over magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), considered the gold standard of medical imaging, such as allowing some additional detection of cell viability and lower cost, the researchers said.

"Ultimately, the MRI is much more sophisticated and can do more, but BLI is very straightforward," Mason said. "It's perfect for evaluating new classes of drugs designed to cause acute vascular changes in tumors, because the tests are inexpensive and easy to do."

More information

The U.S. National Library of Medicine has more about diagnostic imaging techniques.