The condition of a two-year-old girl with E.coli O157 is said to have improved slightly overnight in hospital.

Rebecca MacRae, from Oldmeldrum, Aberdeenshire, remains in a serious but stable condition in Glasgow's Yorkhill Hospital.

Doctors are concerned she may have suffered brain damage as a result of the infection.

Four other members of her family who also contracted the bug are also being treated for symptoms of the infection.

You've got to keep on going and hope she will pull through without any effects to her Ross MacRae

Her sisters, Louise, four, and 11-month-old Chloe, are being treated in Aberdeen.

The girls' condition is described as "satisfactory".

Their six-year-old brother Kyle and their father Ross are showing mild symptoms.

'Got to be strong'

He said the whole family was devastated about Rebecca's condition.

"It is very difficult. You just want to go to a wee corner and just cry, but you can't I have got to be strong for everybody," he said.

"You've got to keep on going and hope she will pull through without any effects to her."

Rebecca MacRae contracted E.coli

Professor Hugh Pennington, of Aberdeen University, said the bug lived "naturally" in the guts of cattle and sheep.

He said it did not cause them harm but when humans contracted it, particularly the young and very old, it could affect the brain and the kidneys.

A spokesman for the Scottish Centre for Infection and Environmental Health said the total number of cases of E-Coli 0157 so far this year was 209.

For the same period last year, the figure was 213. He said he was unaware of any other cases current in Scotland.

The number of cases in 2001 was 237 and 197 in 2000.