The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said late last week there is a new Salmonella outbreak linked to a dietary supplement containing moringa leaf powder.

So far 11 people in 7 states have been sickened in the Salmonella Richmond outbreak, including three people who required hospitalization. No deaths have been reported. Illness onset dates range from May 12, 2025, to September 4, 2025. Virginia has three cases linked to this outbreak, followed by Kansas and Florida with two each. Michigan, New York, and North and South Carolina have each reported a single case. 

The CDC said all lot codes and best-by dates of Member's Mark Super Greens dietary supplement powder are affected. The powder was sold at Sam's Club stores nationwide and online. 

Do not eat any Member's Mark Super Greens powdered supplements containing moringa leaf powder.

"Do not eat any Member's Mark Super Greens powdered supplements containing moringa leaf powder. Throw them away or return them to where you bought them," CDC said. 

FDA says contamination comes from single lot of powder 

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) also published a recall notice for the powder, explaining the contamination was caused by a single lot of moringa leaf powder from Vallon Farm Direct PVT LTD of Johdpur, India. 

"The implicated lot of moringa powder was supplied to multiple U.S. distributors," the FDA said. "FDA is working to determine the point of contamination and what additional products were made with the implicated lot of moringa leaf powder."

A randomized controlled trial conducted in 18 public hospitals in Kenya finds that the the addition of glucocorticoids to standard care for severe community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) reduced the risk of death by 16%.

For the pragmatic, open-label trial, published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine, a team led by researchers at the Kenya Medical Research Institute assigned adult CAP patients without a clear indication for glucocorticoids to receive either standard care or standard care plus oral low-dose glucocorticoids for 10 days.

Of the 2,180 patients, none required intensive care, 1,089 were assigned to glucocorticoids within 48 hours after hospital admission, and 1,091 were assigned to standard care. The median patient age was 53 years.

"Adjunctive glucocorticoids may reduce mortality among patients with severe community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) in well-resourced settings," the authors wrote. "Whether these drugs are beneficial in low-resource settings with limited diagnostic and treatment facilities is unclear."

Balancing benefits with risk of metabolic complications

By 30 days, 22.6% of glucocorticoid recipients and 26.0% in the standard-care group had died (hazard ratio, 0.84). Rates of adverse and serious adverse events (SAEs) were similar in the two groups.

Although hyperglycemia is mostly controllable, blood glucose monitoring is difficult in overburdened sub-Saharan hospitals.

The trial's pragmatic nature means that the results are likely to be more relevant to patients in sub-Saharan Africa than to those in high-resource settings, the researchers said. "On the basis of our findings, adjunctive glucocorticoids could represent a low cost intervention to reduce the high case fatality associated with CAP in sub-Saharan Africa," they wrote.

In an editorial in the same journal, Arthur Kwizera, MD, of Makerere University College of Health Sciences in Uganda, and Martin Dunser, MD, of Johannes Kepler University in Austria, noted that hyperglycemia (high blood glucose) occurred in 16.6% of glucocorticoid recipients.

"Although hyperglycemia is mostly controllable, blood glucose monitoring is difficult in overburdened sub-Saharan hospitals," they wrote. "As the prevalence of diabetes is increasing across Africa, introducing glucocorticoid therapy without strengthened laboratory and nursing capacity may put patients at risk and requires a nuanced balance of the survival benefits and metabolic complications."