Pbhl 3100 Week 1 Case Study Of Salmonellosis

PBHL 3100 Group #4 Foodborne Illness Salmonellosis Foodborne illness, more commonly called food poisoning, is the cause of nearly 48 million illnesses, and an estimated 3,000 deaths in the United States annually. Food poisoning is caused by a bacterial, viral, or parasitic contamination of food. It can happen at any point during the food production realm; growing, harvesting, processing, storing, shipping, or preparing. There are several bacterial, viral, or parasitic agents that can cause food poisoning. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 90% of these illnesses are due to the seven most common pathogens: Salmonella, Norovirus, Campylobacter, Toxoplasma, E. coli O157:H7, Listeria and Clostridium perfringens.
Typhi and S. Paratyphi A. Onset of symptoms for this form of Salmonella usually becomes present within six to seventy-two hours after exposure to the bacteria. This subset of the illness causes nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal cramps, headaches and fever; with symptoms generally lasting four to seven days and completely tapering off within a week. Symptoms and the duration of illnesses may vary from individual to individual depending on host factors, the amount of the dose ingested, and the individual bacterium strain characteristics. In otherwise healthy people, symptoms usually vanish by themselves, but long-term arthritis may develop three to four weeks after the onset of acute symptoms due to an individual’s weak or delayed autoimmune response. Typhoid fever is a more severe, intense, and debilitating form of Salmonellosis. For those under the most serious conditions, up to 10% of people who don’t get treatment may die. Typhoid fever is caused only by the S. Typhi and S. Paratyphi A serotypes of Salmonella, both of which are found only in humans. Onset of symptoms generally occur one to three weeks after exposure to the bacteria, but sometimes may take as long as two months to surface. Symptoms of typhoid fever are much more serious and urgent; high fevers from 103° to 104°F, headaches, lethargy, loss of appetite, a rash of flat rosecolored spots, and
Those with weak immune systems, the elderly, infants, people with HIV or chronic illnesses, and those on some medications are particularly vulnerable to severe illness from Salmonella (CDC 2012). People with HIV are estimated to have Salmonellosis at least 20 times more than does the general population, and they tend to have recurrent episodes. The only way to determine whether Salmonella is in fact the cause for the illness is through laboratory testing of the feces. There are currently no vaccines to prevent Salmonellosis, and antibiotic treatment is getting harder to produce each year as the Salmonella strains become more and more resistant to the treatments. To prevent Salmonellosis, people should not consume raw eggs or unpasteurized dairy products, poultry should be well-cooked, produce should be thoroughly washed, cross-contamination of foods should be avoided, and hands should always be washed after contact with feces (CDC 2012). Isolation and detection methods have been developed for many foods having prior history of Salmonella contamination. Conventional culture and identification methods may require four to six days for presumptive results. In order to prevent these bacteria from inhabiting water supplies, there needs to be more rapid and more sensitive molecular detection techniques. Direct methods for DNA extraction from bacterial cells concentrated on filters can be successfully used in place of