Campylobacter fetus ssp jejuni: isolation from patients with gastroenteritis

Within a seven-month period, Campylobacter fetus ssp jejuni was isolated in East Tennessee from 18 patients with gastroenteritis; 83% of these patients had bloody diarrhea. Absence of other enteric organisms such as Salmonella, Shigella, and Yersinia implicated C fetus ssp jejuni as the causative agent. A fourfold increase in titer by tube agglutination from four of eight patients studied supported the pathogenicity of this organism. Treatment with erythromycin alleviated gastroenteritis symptoms within 24 to 48 hours, with concurrent disappearance of the organism from the feces. An isolation rate of 8% in our patients indicates that C fetus ssp jejuni is more common as a cause of human diarrhea than Salmonella or Shigella. The severity of the C fetus ssp jejuni gastroenteritis poses a possible reclassification from diarrhea or gastroenteritis to acute dysentery syndrome.