Salmonellosis: Nontyphoidal

Abstract

Nontyphoidal salmonellosis traditionally refers to disease caused by any serotype of organisms in the genus Salmonella, other than Salmonella Typhi, the causative agent of typhoid fever (see Chapter 42). The most common manifestation of nontyphoidal salmonellosis is acute enterocolitis, but the organism can cause focal infection, bacteremia, meningitis, as well as enteric fever that may be clinically indistinguishable from that caused by S. Typhi. Nontyphoidal salmonellosis is a disease of considerable clinical and public health importance. An estimated 1.4 million cases of salmonellosis occur each year in the United States, of which a small fraction are cultured and reported. The direct patient care and lost productivity costs alone have been estimated to exceed $2 billion annually, but when one considers the added costs of plant closings, product recalls, and losses of food production, the true economic impact of salmonellosis is likely to be substantially greater.(1) © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009.