IS SALMONELLA-ENTERITIDIS PT4 A SUPER BUG

Salmonella enteritidis phage type 4 is the most common cause of human salmonellosis in the UK and on many occasions the illness is associate d with the consumption of contaminated poultry meat and, to a lesser e xtent, eggs. At present no satisfactory explanation has been proposed for this unprecedented increase in the incidence of this phage type du ring recent years. In this paper various properties of S. enteritidis, including the natural history of infections in chickens and its susce ptibility to heat will be compared with those of other invasive serova rs, such as S. typhimurium, in an attempt to identify factors which ma y have given phage type 4 a competitive advantage over other salmonell as.