Lower GI Micro - Zimmer Flashcards
What are the two bacteria that can cause either food poisoning or food associated infections?
Staph Aureus Bacillus Cereus Clostridium Botulinum Campylobacter Jejuni Guillain-Barre
Bacillus Cereus
Clostridium Botulinum
Your grandma begins giving your 8mo niece a spoonful of honey “to help the medicine go down.” Luckily you dive across the living room and snatch the honey out of her hands. First of all, Mary Poppins said “a spoonful of sugar” second of all:
Don’t give kids honey before they are a year old!
They can get floppy baby syndrome.
Clostridium Botulinum spores can be found in honey, they then produce toxins and cause: lethargy, poor feeding, constipation, weak cry and weak muscle tone
You are an elementary school principle and there is a crisis at hand. The school is receiving phone-calls because last night 80 children and counting became sick after eating lunch in the cafeteria. They are all experiencing diarrhea dn abdominal cramps. None have a significant fever and none are vomiting. One of the student’s mothers is a physician and she says when she analyzed her son’s feces she saw match-stick looking bacteria under the microscope.
What is the cause of their illness?
Can this illness be passed to the families of these kids?
Will Chicken-Pot-Pie Thursdays ever be the same?
The bacteria that looks like match sticks is a gram+ spore-forming rod: Clostridium Perfringens
The illness cannot pass form one person to another (the loading amount of bacteria must be high for symptoms)
Chicken-Pot-Pie Thursdays will be forever changed.
You work at a Chinese restaurant and begin noticing a lot of clientele returning to the restaurant very angry because they believe the food made them sick with watery diarrhea and cramps a few hours later. Your manager denies all claims. You have been suspicious for a while about the rice that sits overnight so you analyze a rice sample in your friend’s lab.
Behold! Box-car shaped gram positive rods! What is the culprit?
Bacillus Cereus
can actually survive the rice-cooking process
You are eating your favorite meal, a lukewarm home-canned batch of refried beans. A little while after eating you begin feeling strange. Your vision blurs, your eyelids droop, and your speech begins to slur. What is going on?
Toxin produced by Clostridium Botulinum has irreversibly blocked the release of ACh from the motor end plate. This has resulted in muscle weakness and paralysis
How does Staph Aureus cause foodborne illness?
Toxin produced by the bacteria causes true food poisoning when ingested. Once toxin is gone, illness resolves.
Often found in foods that sit at room temp. for a long time.
What kind of bacteria will you see in the stool or vomit of an individual with Staph Aureus foodbrone illness?
Gram + cocci
Bunches of graps
What is the mechanism by which bacillus cereus causes GI disease?
Large molecular weight enterotoxin is produced by the bacteria once many have entered the small intestine.
You feel terrible. You have diarrhea, fever, cramping, and abdominal pain. Worse yet you are a med student and can’t figure out what made you sick… About 3 days ago you ate some chicken, but you are sure that you cooked it long enough. Then it hits you, you forgot to clean the cutting board after cutting up the chicken. Then you sliced all the lettuce…
The stool culture from the clinic comes back with a diagnosis, but you already know it is:
Campylobacter Jejuni
After campylobacter Jejuni infection, weakness or tingling sensation in the legs a few weeks after infection could be an ominous sign of:
Guillain-Barre Syndrome
An agar uses H2S and lactose to identify an organism.
The motile microbe comes out black, meaning it is H2S positive and lactose negative.
What is the organism?
Salmonella!
A couple days ago you drank milk “straight from the cow.” It felt great then, but now it feels terrible. You have diarrhea and abdominal cramps and you are actually feeling some joint pain you have never experienced before.
What mechanism is the offending microbe using to cause your diarrhea?
How did it cause systemic infection to your joint?
Salmonella Enteritidis
Afer invading the cells of the small intestine it causes secretion of water and electrolytes to cause diarrhea
It is disseminated systemically when it is phagocytosed by neutrophils and macrophages
You work in a lab and your coworker Jerry messed up again. He says he accidentally mixed the E.Coli together with the Vibrio Cholerae. You say, “Jerry Relax, all you have to do is add _____________.” Then he will be able to tell them apart.
Kovacs Oxidase reagent
Vibrio species are oxidase positive, so they will all turn purple
The E.Coli are oxidase negative, so they will remain colorless
Why should pregnant women avoid raw millk, soft cheese, sprouts, and uncooked hot dogs? Won’t that make them depressed?
Maybe, but it’s important.
Pregnant women, older adults, and newborns are vulnerable to listeriosis. It is found in these foods that remain uncooked.
Fever, muscle aches, and a stuff neck can be signs of meningitis or sepsis in vulnerable populations
If it weren’t for the hemolysins TDH and TRH this organism found in raw fish and shellfish could never cause bloody diarrhea, cramps, nausea, and vomiting.
Vibrio Parahemolyticus
