A third of animal acquired illnesses are attributed to Salmonella infection.
Pets: an unexpected reservoir of Salmonella
Have you ever wondered if your pet could make you sick? Did you know that kissing your pets or letting them share your food can lead to a serious or even life-threatening gastrointestinal infection? Of the 3.2 million enteric illnesses acquired annually in the U.S., 14% are caused by animal contact and a third are due to Salmonella species. Children are generally more susceptible to salmonellosis as their immune systems are still developing and hand hygiene is difficult to control.
Think your pooch is exempt? Salmonella prevalence in shelter dogs across Texas ranged from 1.9% to 8.3%. While dogs may exhibit diarrheal symptoms when infected with Salmonella, Leahy et al. demonstrated that over 60% of Salmonella positive dogs had normal feces and didn’t show any clinical symptoms, suggesting that dog owners should be careful with fecal contact irrespective of symptomology.
Salmonella infection is not restricted to families with furry friends. While baby turtles are a low maintenance option, they commonly carry Salmonella bacteria on their outer skin and shell, posing a high risk of spreading disease. In 2016, four multistate outbreaks infected 133 people and 41% of cases were in children under five years of age.
Have a backyard flock? Many families now keep poultry, such as chicken, ducks, and turkeys, which can also be risky if proper handling guidelines are not followed. The CDC recorded eight live poultry related Salmonella outbreaks in 2016 that infected 611 people leading to 138 hospitalizations.
Save time and money with molecular diagnostics for Salmonella detection and serotyping
The initial symptoms of salmonellosis are diarrhea, fever, and abdominal cramps that develop 12 to 72 hours after infection. During outbreak situations, rapid identification of the causal agent is important to identify the appropriate treatment as well as to aid public health authorities in surveillance and monitoring.
Traditional culture-based methods for Salmonella screening are laborious and slow, taking up to 7 days to obtain a definitive result. In recent years, several molecular multiplexing technologies have been developed that yield faster results and higher sample throughput. Many recent publications have demonstrated the utility of the Luminex xTAG® Gastrointestinal Pathogen Panel (GPP) for the detection of diarrhea pathogens and the surveillance of circulating enteropathogens.
Did you know that using xTAG GPP one hospital was able to reduce patient isolation time from 2202 to 1447 days for a savings of approximately $100,000 per year as compared to traditional methods, which more than offsets the additional laboratory testing costs?
Serotyping of Salmonella isolates is important for public health monitoring. The xMAP® Salmonella Serotyping Assay (SSA) serotypes greater than 85% of commonly encountered Salmonella isolates within 4 hours. When the xMAP SSA was compared to traditional serotyping, xMAP SSA correctly identified 98.5% of the isolates, as well as five nonmotile and three monophasic strains that went undetected by the traditional method.
Learn more about xMAP SSA and xTAG GPP.
