A 12-year-old girl is brought to the emergency department by her parents due to severe diarrhea for the past 24 hours. The family had recently returned from a 2-week trip to Honduras, where they stayed in rural areas with limited access to clean drinking water. The girl appears lethargic and is noted to have sunken eyes, dry mucous membranes, and delayed capillary refill. Her parents report that she has had more than 10 episodes of watery diarrhea per day, describing the stools as pale, cloudy, and with specks of mucus. The pathogen most likely responsible for this patient’s condition is most taxonomically similar to which of the following?
A) Adenovirus
B) Leptospira interrogans
C) Neisseria meningitidis
D) Pseudomonas aeruginosa
E) Rotavirus
