The common infection that killed Tanya Roberts

The cause of death for actress Tanya Roberts has been revealed as complications from a urinary tract infection.

Roberts, 65, starred in the James Bond movie A View to a Kill, and portrayed Midge Pinciotti on the sitcom That '70s Show (below).

Her representative Mike Pingel said the actress collapsed after walking her dogs on Christmas Eve and was taken to Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles and placed on a ventilator. 

“With a heavy heart I can confirm the death of Tanya Roberts last night on January 4, 2021 around 9:30 p.m. PT at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, CA,” Pingel, said in a statement posted to Roberts’ website. “Roberts’s cause of death was from a urinary tract infection which spread to her kidney, gallbladder, liver, and then blood stream.”

News of Roberts’ death caused shockwaves around the world when it was first erroneously reported on Monday morning. She later died on Monday night.

Her partner of 18 years, Lance O'Brien, thought she was dead after visiting her in hospital on Sunday night, seeing her eyes close and thinking she “faded”. He walked out of the hospital and never spoke with medical staff.

O'Brien found out she was still alive in the middle of an interview with the TV show Inside Edition. During the interview, he answered a phone call from the hospital where Roberts was being treated, and said, "Now, you're telling me she's alive?"

Crying, O'Brien continued, "The hospital is telling me she is alive. They are calling me from the ICU team."

How does a UTI become deadly?

UTIs are typically treated with a short course of antibiotics, but “a small proportion of these infections can become more serious, particularly in patients who have other medical problems, placing them at higher risk,” says Dr Joshua Halpern, a urologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and assistant professor of urology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

Some people may not experience normal symptoms of a UTI, though, causing them to delay care, says Dr Jennifer Linehan, a urologist and associate professor of urologic oncology at the John Wayne Cancer Institute at Providence Saint John’s Health Center. “They don’t recognise that they’re starting to have a bladder infection and, if it goes untreated, it can progress to the kidneys,” she explains. “When it gets to the kidneys, they’ll start to have a fever and not feel well.”

From there, the infection can get into a person’s bloodstream and lead to a condition called bacteremia, i.e. the presence of bacteria in the blood, she says. It can also cause sepsis, a life-threatening complication in which the body launches an extreme response to an infection.

“Once the infection is in the bloodstream, it can go to any organ,” Dr Linehan explains, and it’s essentially the body’s reaction to the infection that turns deadly. “The body is overwhelmed—sometimes a patient will start to get kidney and liver failure and the body shuts down.”

However, this is very rare in an otherwise healthy person, especially for a urinary tract infection to go undetected as it progresses, says Dr David Kaufman, director of Central Park Urology, a division of Maiden Lane Medical.

“Conceivably, you can have a urinary tract infection for a long time, not recognize it, and have it eventually spread to the kidneys,” he says. “But once it reaches the kidneys, you’ll be sick as a dog with fever and chills. People almost always catch it at that point.”

While experts stress that this kind of situation is rare, they note that it’s important to pay attention to the warning signs of a UTI. If you have any of the symptoms above, seek medical attention ASAP.