A bacterium carried only by humans and causes an estimated 300,000 cases of diarrheal illnesses in the United States per year. Poor hygiene, especially poor hand washing, causes Shigella to be passed easily from person to person via food. Once it is in food, it multiplies rapidly at room temperature.
Shigella flexneri, Shigella dysenteriae, Shigella sonnei and Shigella boydii are all strains of bacteria that can cause foodborne shigellosis. This bacterium is usually transmitted through feces, and therefore, any prepared food contaminated by an infected food handler is potentially hazardous.
rod-shaped gram-negative enterobacteria; some are pathogenic for warm-blooded animals; can be used as a bioweapon
a bacteria with symptoms similar to Salmonella
A group of bacteria that can cause an illness called shigellosis, with high fever and acute diarrhea, sometimes mixed with blood (dysentery). Enteric infections with Shigella can trigger reactive arthritis.
Rod-shaped bacteria, certain species of which cause dysentery.
A group of bacteria that normally inhabit the intestinal tract and cause infantile gastroenteritis, summer diarrhea of childhood and various forms of dysentery including epidemic and opportunistic bacillary dysentery. Named for the Japanese bacteriologist Kiyoshi Shiga (1870-1957).
Shigella are Gram-negative, non-motile, non-spore forming rod-shaped bacteria closely related to Escherichia coli and salmonella. The causative agent of human shigellosis, Shigella also cause disease in other primates, but not in other mammals.