Salmonella up close (Food Safety News)BACKGROUND
Salmonella are bacteria that are often responsible for food-borne illnesses. The symptoms of Salmonella infection is “nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramps, diarrhea, fever, chills, headache, and blood in stool’ (Mayo Clinic, 2019). Sometimes Salmonella infections need to be treated with antibiotics, but it is becoming more common that Salmonella and other infectious bacteria are antibiotic resistant due to overexposure to antibiotics (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2019). When someone with an antibiotic resistant bacteria gets sick, it can be incredibly difficult to treat if the person’s immune system isn’t able to fight off the illness on its own. However, there’s an alternative, bacteriophages are viruses that infect and kill specific bacteria or archaea. This treatment option has gained interest in the last decade due to the increasing abundance of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Continue reading “Nasty Salmonella Infections Could be Defeated by Viruses Inside Our Guts Without Antibiotics”