Cyclosporiasis may not have been on many people’s radars until this summer, but as of mid-August 2026, the intestinal infection has been reported in more than 24,000 people in the U.S. and across 47 states. The infection is caused by the cyclospora parasite, which is typically found on raw produce that’s been treated with unclean water during farming.  

The outbreaks have caused many people to avoid eating at some fast-food chains or to avoid eating shredded lettuce, both of which have been linked to some of the cyclosporiasis cases. Many Americans are trying to avoid eating the most risky types of produce, or any produce at all.  

On this episode of HealthChangers, host Ashley Bach speaks with Dr. Mike Woodruff, executive medical director at Regence. Dr. Woodruff has a passion for food safety and for empowering patients to make healthy lifestyle choices. They talk about the leap in cyclosporiasis cases this summer, and what you can do to protect yourself and your family from the outbreaks.  

AB: Should folks be worried about the cyclosporiasis outbreaks? 

MW: I want you to be informed, but do I want you to be worried? Not really. And the reason is that if you’re informed, you can understand what precautions you can take, and then if you do have symptoms, what you should do.  

AB: It can take seven to ten days from cyclospora infection for symptoms to develop. That makes it hard to trace the source of the infection in a given person, right?  

MW: Yes. That delay in symptoms means that the cause is often not obvious, and what it really points out is the importance of having well-funded organizations on the federal, the state and the local level that can work together to track down and do the science that’s necessary to pinpoint where these infections are coming from, so that they can then intervene and keep us safe.  

AB: Another important point is that the cyclospora parasite can’t pass from person to person. It’s not like an even more common stomach infection like norovirus, where someone gets that in their household and it just spreads through the family.  

MW: You’re bringing up a really good point. We’re not going to know right off the bat [with an individual infection] if it’s cyclospora or if it’s something similar like norovirus or rotavirus. There are a number of viruses that do this. There are some other bacteria that cause similar symptoms. Symptoms like watery diarrhea, stomach upset, feeling weak. Maybe your appetite goes away. You can even have some nausea at times, and that’s a symptom of many different types of infections, so it’s always good to assume that you can transmit that to people in your household and others. The key is washing your hands really well, especially around preparing food and when using the bathroom. So I’d say just assume it’s transmissible, but be reassured that in the case of cyclospora, it’s not really being transmitted inside households. 

AB: If someone is experiencing some of those symptoms, and they think it could be cyclosporiasis, what should they do? 

MW: The really good news is that your doctor can test for and treat both cyclospora and a lot of the other infections that cause those similar symptoms, like watery diarrhea, severe stomach cramping or pain, losing appetite, losing weight, feeling a lot of gas or bloating, nausea, fatigue. These symptoms can wax and wane.  It’s a good idea to have a lower threshold these days for going to see your doctor and getting tested because with all those diseases, we have tests for them, and then we also have treatments for a lot of them. In the case of cyclospora, it’s an antibiotic, and the antibiotic in most cases will shorten the course of the disease and make you feel better sooner and help you recover.  

So it’s really important to get tested when you have more than one or two days of these kinds of symptoms.  

AB: There have been 24,000 cases of cyclosporiasis in the U.S., which is a lot, but statistically speaking, the risk of any given person getting it is pretty low. So for most people, this isn’t so much about how to treat the infections as how do you protect yourself and your family from the risk. What kind of precautions should people take? 

MW: Let’s just first get it out there: we should not stop buying fresh fruits and vegetables. They’re such a crucial part of our diet. They have such good vitamins and micronutrients and fiber, really key to a healthy diet. But we can be a little bit smarter about how we consume those things– I think of it as minimizing our risk as much as possible. And I think the best way to look at it is just act like this kind of outbreak could happen at any time. And anytime you’ve got fresh produce in your house, there are some important principles we can follow to keep ourselves safe. 

AB: What are those principles? 

MW: The first thing is, be informed, track the headlines. Pay attention to what’s going on in the country. Like we said before, there are organizations that are working hard to monitor and do surveillance for outbreaks of various kinds of infectious agents that can be transmitted by the food we eat. For example we’ve seen cyclospora outbreaks related to raspberries in the past, to cilantro, and other leafy vegetables like parsley, and so you’ll see those things reported in the news most of the time when they happen.  

The second thing you can do is eat local. The global supply chain has really increased the amount that we’re able to get food from outside the country, and honestly, cyclospora, for example, is more endemic in other regions than in the U.S. And so, in this most recent outbreak, we saw that the likely source is going to be lettuce grown in another country. The lettuce came in and was distributed through fast food chains, and with that kind of global reach of the supply chain, really could get in from anywhere.  

Now, we’ve talked before, I think, about the importance of your local farmers market. It’s such a good activity for you to get outside, walk around, meet people from your community, and oh, by the way, you get locally grown produce, and you can actually talk to the growers and ask them, “what are you doing to keep your produce safe from things like cyclospora?”  

The other thing to do is know what your risk is from any given fruit, vegetable, or produce, and then act accordingly.  

AB: What are the different categories of produce, when it comes to germ risk? 

MW: There are certain [types of produce] that are a lot safer in terms of the potential for something like cyclospora, those things with peels, like a banana or a pineapple, things that we have a really tough peel that we don’t eat, avocados and citrus fruit go in that category. That’s probably the safest.  

And then you get to [types of produce] that you can wash really well. I think of an apple. There’s not a lot of crevices, nooks, and crannies for germs to hide in. So, those types of produce can be washed really well. With a produce brush and some veggie wash. You wash that apple off, you give it a scrub, you run it under fresh water, and your risk is really reduced.  

[The last category] is leafy greens. They’re really good for you. They’re higher risk because there are all those nooks and crannies in them. So I wash everything that comes into the house that’s a leafy green— even those bagged salads that say they’re triple washed. You just never know. That’s my practice. I’m not sure everyone wants to do that, but I pay a little more attention, so I even wash those bagged salads at home. 

AB: All the precautions you just mentioned, these are the things that you should be doing at any time, not just during outbreaks, right?  

MW: Prevention is really important, and the more you make it a habit – well, this is true with everything. With exercise, with eating healthy, but also staying safe from foodborne germs. If you make it a routine thing to wash your produce well, you’re going to be safer. 

AB: We’re recording this conversation in mid-August 2026. I wanted to give folks an idea of when can we expect the cyclosporiasis outbreaks to stop, and for folks to feel more confident in raw produce.   

MW: For a couple reasons we’ve probably reached our peak [of the outbreaks]. One is the interventions that have happened in identifying the cause of the biggest source of this most recent outbreak, and the intervention to get those products out of the food supply.  

And as temperatures cool in the fall, we won’t have those kind of moderate outdoor temperatures that allow the cysts of cyclospora to mature and become infectious. And so, as the weather gets colder, we can expect a decline as well. But in the meantime, let’s keep eating healthy vegetables and fruits and produce because our risk on an individual level is pretty darn low.