How to Recognize Food Poisoning

Food poisoning refers to an illness that is primarily transmitted by the ingestion of contaminated food. It is a serious threat to public health and includes the classic toxin-producing bacteria such as botulism, chemical poisons and pathogens such as Salmonella. Food-borne illnesses also may be caused by zoos with an animal reservoir that only affects humans incidentally. The following steps will show how to recognize a case of food poisoning.

Instructions

• 1

  Expect the onset of food poisoning to be sudden and acute with the initial symptoms consisting of severe vomiting and small bowel diarrhea. It primarily affects the gastrointestinal (GI) tract but chemical, plant and seafood poisons also can cause significant impairment of the central nervous system.

• 2

  Interrogate the patient's recent contacts. This is the best way of determining the etiology for food poisoning because these cases usually do not present a specific clinical picture. Food poisoning is therefore diagnosed clinically in most cases.

• 3

  Narrow the list of possible causative agents based on the suspected incubation period. Extremely short incubation periods of less than 16 hours are dominated by metal, plant or seafood poisonings.

• 4

  Look at diarrheal diseases such as botulism, cholera, Campylobacter, Salmonella or Shigella for cases with a short incubation period of one to three days.

• 5

  Consider enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli or Yersinia as likely causes of food poisonings for long incubation periods of three to five days.

• 6

  Suspect parasitic infections in cases with a long incubation period of one to four weeks.