Extraintestinal salmonellosis

Between 1969 and 1984, 6564 non-typhoid salmonella strains were isolated at the Liverpool Public Health Laboratory of which 194 (3.0%) were from extraintestinal sites. Blood (34%) and urine (32%) isolates accounted for two-thirds of these, with the remainder being recovered from pus and inflammatory tissue (23%), bone (5%), cerebrospinal fluid (5%) and sputum (3%). Certain serotypes tended to cause more invasive disease than others, i.e. Salmonella choleraesuis, S. dublin, S. london, S. virchow and S. panama: this association for S. london has not previously been described. The spectrum of disease caused by non-typhoid strains was broad. This survey confirms the importance of non-typhoid salmonellas as occasional causes of invasive disease and local sepsis outside the gastrointestinal tract.