Here’s something to unnerve you during your next trip to the supermarket. Research out this week shows that a substantial portion of urinary tract infections can be traced back to store-bought meat tainted with dangerous Escherichia coli bacteria.

Researchers at George Washington University and others examined thousands of samples taken from people with UTIs. They found that roughly one in five infections were likely caused by foodborne strains of E. coli . The results suggest that contaminated meat is an underappreciated source of these often miserable infections, the researchers say.

“These findings highlight zoonotic transmission as an important driver of UTIs,” they wrote in their paper, published Thursday in the journal mBio.

The origins of a UTI

UTIs are one of the most c

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