Why do symptoms of Salmonella usually take several hours to present themselves after ingestion of bacteria?
Salmonella is a bacterium that can cause gastrointestinal diarrhea. It is one of the most frequent causes of foodborne illness! The bacterium can be found in foods contaminated with animal (human, bird) feces, and is frequently found in raw eggs, and undercooked or raw meat. Symptoms of salmonellosis (infection with salmonella) includediarrhea, abdominal cramps and fever. Symptoms usually start 8 to 72 hours after the contaminated food was eaten. The reason that it takes several hours is that the small numbers of bacteria that might be present in contaminated food do not trigger a response. But once the bacteria are present in the intestinal tract, they will crawl into the human cells, and will start to multiply. This process takes several hours, but after that there will be many more bacteria than in the beginning, and the body will start to respond.
