Salmonella - what is it? Salmonellosis: symptoms, treatment and prevention

Intestinal infections are dangerous for children and adults. Most of them occur in the form of an epidemic, that is, a whole group of people immediately fall ill. Special attention of the general population is paid to salmonellosis. What is this infection, and why is it said so much?

What is Salmonella?

The disease is caused by bacteria from the genus Salmonella. They are widespread in nature, live in water, soil and in the gastrointestinal tract of many animals. In total, there are many varieties, more than 2,200 of them are capable of causing an infectious disease in humans. Getting into the intestines in large quantities, salmonella are introduced into the bloodstream and carried throughout the body.

Salmonella are quite stable in the external environment. For a long time, bacteria are stored in frozen food, contaminated water and soil. In meat and milk, they multiply perfectly, while the quality of products does not deteriorate in appearance. Microbes are destroyed at a temperature of + 70 ° C for 5-10 minutes. So provarivanie products well protects from an infection. Eggs should be cooked for 4 minutes. But in fried eggs, salmonella can preserve its pathogenicity. Salting and smoking are also not affected.

How the disease proceeds

Depending on the variety of bacteria and the characteristics of the human body, several forms of the disease may manifest.

• Intestinal form with varying degrees of damage to the stomach, thin and thick parts of the intestine.
• The generalized form is characterized by a severe course of the disease and the spread of the pathogen throughout the body. It is divided into typhoid-like, septic and meningic.
• The erased form and bacterial excretion can be asymptomatic, but in this case the person is the carrier of salmonella and the source of their release into the external environment.

Disease is severe in children under one year old and elderly people weakened by chronic illnesses. After recovery, a person develops unstable immunity to salmonellosis. What does this mean? As a rule, the organism acquires resistance to repeated infection within one year. Then a person can get infected and get sick again.

Ways of transmission of infection

Salmonella - what is it, an intestinal or general infection? The behavior of the microbe in the body largely depends on the mode of infection.

• Nutritional . The most common way of spreading, often causing outbreaks of infection due to violations of sanitary and hygienic rules in places of public catering. Salmonella in adults and children develops with the use of products of animal origin, contaminated with salmonella in a significant amount: meat, eggs and egg products, milk and dairy products, fish. In the production of bacteria fall either as a result of contamination of intestinal contents in meat-packing plants, or in the slaughter of sick and weakened animals. Also, the source of infection can be a person - the carrier of infection, in contact with food. The second significant way of getting salmonella into the human body is with drinking water from contaminated water bodies or as a result of emergency situations in the water supply system.
• The contact-household way of infection is important for outbreaks in hospitals. When isolating a specific microflora in these cases, the diagnosis is "salmonellosis". Symptoms in children undergoing treatment in hospitals occur massively, more often in the summer.
• Salmonella can be transmitted by airborne dust in metropolitan areas, but this mode of infection has no great significance in the occurrence of mass diseases.

Symptoms of salmonella

Getting into the intestines, salmonella begin to actively multiply and destroy the mucous membrane, causing inflammation. In addition, bacteria release a number of toxins. They play a significant role in the pathogenesis of a disease such as salmonella. Symptoms and treatment will differ slightly depending on the form of the infection.

• The incubation period averages from 12 to 24 hours, but can be from 6 to 72 hours.
• Usually the disease is acute. Body temperature rises to 39 ° C, there is nausea, headache, weakness, spastic pain in the abdomen.
• Liquid stool from 4 to 9 times a day, the nature of the stools is watery, foamy, with an unpleasant odor. On 2-3 days there is an admixture of mucus, sometimes with blood.
• In the case of development of the gastrointestinal form of the disease, the duration of the course of salmonellosis is from 2 to 10 days.
• In severe cases, it is possible to develop dehydration of the body and infectious-toxic shock, the cause of which is salmonellosis. Symptoms in young children with septic form indicate a lesion of the meninges.
• With typhoid form, symptoms of bowel disease may be absent. Characterized by a high, up to + 40 ° C temperature, pale skin, a rash on the abdomen and trunk.
• The disease can be complicated by peritonitis, toxic expansion of the intestine, appendicitis, acute cardiac and renal insufficiency, development of purulent foci in organs and tissues. For this reason, meningitis, endocarditis, osteomyelitis, arthritis, abscesses of internal organs, pneumonia and urinary tract infections can develop.

Diagnostics

To make a diagnosis, an analysis is made for salmonellosis. For bacteriological culture, take blood, feces, urine, bile, pus from the lesion, vomit. Also investigate products suspected of being the source of infection. Serologic reactions are used to detect antibodies to salmonella in serum .

Treatment of the disease

Treatment of salmonellosis requires hospitalization in the case of development of severe damage to the organs of the gastrointestinal tract and the course of the disease in a generalized form. In other cases, patients are treated at home. Beforehand it is necessary to confirm the laboratory diagnosis of "salmonellosis". Symptoms and treatment of the disease are interrelated.

• Assign antibiotics of a wide spectrum of action to obtain the results of the subtitle (determining the sensitivity of the pathogen to antibacterial drugs), and then, if necessary, adjust the treatment. Term of the analysis is 5 days. The difficulty is that to date there are many varieties of salmonella that are resistant to virtually all medicines.
• Rinse the stomach and intestines.
• Restore the loss of fluid by intravenous or intravenous injection of aqueous-salt solutions.
• Carry out detoxification of the body.
• Analgesics and antispasmodics (the drug "No-shpa" or its analogs).
• For the maintenance of digestion, the administration of enzymes is prescribed: Festal, Mezim Forte and others.
• In the period of illness and after it is necessary to strictly adhere to a sparing diet.

Consequences of infection for the body

If a person suffers from salmonellosis, what does this mean for health in general? The length of stay in the hospital is from 14 to 30 days. After recovery, a laboratory analysis is performed to isolate the pathogen, with a double negative result the patient is recognized as free of infection. Within 2-4 weeks after salmonellosis it is necessary to adhere to a diet and take probiotics - drugs that restore the intestinal microflora.

In order to prevent disease, it is necessary to observe the hygiene of cooking, comply with the rules and conditions for storage of food, boil meat well, do not buy food in suspicious places. If there are signs of salmonellosis, timely treatment to the doctor, correctly diagnosed and competent treatment make the outcome of the disease favorable, and the health damage is minimal.