The Causes of Typhoid

Typhoid is an illness caused by one of two types of Salmonella bacteria. Individuals infected with one of these two strains of bacteria exhibit a number of acute symptoms and can be successfully treated with antibiotics. Although deaths from typhoid have decreased substantially in the last century, many countries throughout the world still suffer from periodic typhoid outbreaks.

Definition

• Typhoid is a disease caused by one of two types of Salmonella bacteria: Salmonella typhi or Salmonella paratyphi. When either type of bacteria enters the body, it is carried throughout the circulatory system to organs such as the liver or spleen. The bacteria reproduce within these organs, then re-enter the bloodstream, where they will go on to invade organs of other body systems, continually multiplying and increasing in number.

  While most people with a typhoid bacteria infection suffer from the acute symptoms of typhoid fever, some individuals experience only a mild illness and continue to harbor typhoid-causing bacteria in their bodies over a long period of time.

Causes

• When the typhoid-causing bacteria invades an infected individual's intestinal and bowel system, bowel movements will contain large numbers of the bacteria, which are capable of surviving outside of the body for weeks. If the excreted matter contaminates soil or water supplies, food supplies can then also become contaminated. In areas of the world with poor hygiene and unclean water supplies, typhoid can be a serious problem.

Symptoms

• After being infected with typhoid-causing bacteria, a person will not experience any symptoms for up to two weeks. At the end of that time, they will develop body aches, chest congestion, severe headaches, diarrhea, abdominal pain and cramping, extreme fatigue, and an intense fever, often as high as 104 degrees.

Treatment

• Antibiotics are used to effectively treat typhoid. Since typhoid-causing bacteria have become resistant to various types of antibiotics in certain, specific areas of the world, the type of antibiotic used is determined by where the infection occurred.

  People who carry the typhoid bacteria without actually suffering from the disease itself can be treated with a long series of antibiotic treatments or, in resistant cases, by the removal of the gall bladder, the organ that normally harbors the largest population of bacteria in the body in typhoid carriers.

Incidence

• Although typhoid cases still occur within industrialized countries, the majority of typhoid outbreaks today are in developing countries located in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Nearly all cases of typhoid identified in the United States, Japan, Australia, and Canada are contracted during a trip to a developing country.