Salmonellosis in children in developing and developed countries and populations

The present review addresses recent developments that relate to the clinical management and prevention of childhood salmonellosis in developed and developing countries.

Invasive disease due to serovar Typhi as well as nontyphoidal salmonellae (NTS) is common in children younger than 5 years old in developing countries, and multidrug resistance is an increasingly difficult problem to manage. A new conjugate vaccine was found to be very effective in preventing typhoid fever in young Vietnamese children and was well tolerated, showing great promise for the future. Antibiotic use in the food animal industry is an important source of disease with multidrug resistant NTS strains in the developed world. Efforts for prevention are aimed at immunization of animals, control of antibiotic use in the food animal industry and careful monitoring of food-borne outbreaks. On the other hand, although the burden of NTS disease in children is far greater in developing countries, especially in tropical Africa, knowledge of even basic epidemiology is lacking. Importantly, it may be that, as spp. acquire increasing resistance, they also acquire increasing virulence that will lead to even greater morbidity and mortality.

Recent developments include a better knowledge of clinical aspects of invasive salmonellosis, an increasing response to the problem of multiple antibiotic resistance (including quinolones), and excellent results from the use of a recently developed conjugate vaccine for typhoid fever in children as young as 2 years old.