The United States just closed an unprecedented Cyclospora outbreak (2, 7). Nearly 20,000 people were sickened across the 2026 season, the biggest cluster traced to recalled iceberg lettuce. Which means somewhere a kid who refused to eat his greens is feeling extremely vindicated.

Cyclospora is not the pathogen most people picture when they think of summer stomach trouble. That is usually a bacterium like Salmonella or E. coli, or a virus like norovirus. Among parasites, Cryptosporidium, the one behind the diarrhea outbreaks that shut down public pools, is the more common summer name (5). Which makes this season the exception: the rarer of the two parasites is the one that exploded, and the one the news zeroed in on this year.

Continue reading “The Parasite That Made Headlines This Summer: Cyclospora”