Yersinia enterocolitica infections in children

Y. enterocolitica has been increasingly associated with a wide range of age-related clinical manifestations in children and adults, including febrile gastroenteritis, pseudoappendicitis, arthritis, sepsis, and focal suppurative disease. Although definite patterns of incidence, prevalence, transmission, and pathophysiology are emerging, much remains to be explained. The alert clinician who notifies his clinical laboratory colleagues that special isolation techniques are required to recover this organism from stool samples, and who submits mesenteric lymph nodes for bacteriologic examination in cases of mesenteric adenitis, will aid attempts to further delineate the significance of this emerging pathogen in the United States. Therapy depends on the form and severity of illness and must be guided by in vitro sensitivity, pending animal and epidemiologic studies.