Bacterial enteritis caused by Salmonella Kedougou after returning from Thailand: A case report

Non-typhoid Salmonella (NTS) includes many serotypes that differ in host, geographic distribution, and virulence. We report the case of a 64-year-old man who developed enteritis caused by Salmonella Kedougou without bacteremia after returning from Thailand. The patient stayed in Chiang Mai, Thailand, for 10 days to play golf and was hospitalized with fever, chills, watery diarrhea, and vomiting on the day the patient returned to Japan. The patient was treated with intravenous azithromycin followed by ceftriaxone for 6 days. NTS was detected in the patient's stool culture, and additional strain analyses were performed. Polymerase chain reaction for the O-antigen and sequence analysis of fliC and fliB genes determined the serotype of the strain to be O13: i: l,w. The strain was assigned to sequence type 1543 using multilocus sequence typing. These results confirmed that the strain was S. Kedougou. Considering the incubation period of salmonellosis, the patient was most likely infected with S. Kedougou in Thailand, which is consistent with the epidemiological information that S. Kedougou is frequently detected in northern Thailand. The identification of NTS serovars may not affect clinical management; however, we believe that it is important to accumulate epidemiological information to understand the interactions between the environment, animals, and humans.