Gut reaction: Repeated mild food poisoning triggers chronic disease
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/12/171221143041.htm
Date:
December 21, 2017
Source:
Sanford-Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute
Summary:
Small bacterial infections that may go unnoticed and which the body easily clears without treatment, such as occurs during mild food poisoning, nevertheless can start a chain of events that leads to chronic inflammation and potentially life-threatening colitis.


Caption Recurrent food poisoning induces a pro-inflammatory enzyme (green) that disrupts the body's ability to detoxify resident normal gut bacteria.
Credit: Jamey Marth

These new findings may also help identify the long-mysterious origins of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).

The project was led by Jamey Marth, Ph.D., and included lead author Won Ho Yang, Ph.D.; Michael Mahan, Ph.D.; Douglas Heithoff, Ph.D.; and Peter Aziz, M.Sc., who hold joint appointments at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute (SBP) and UC Santa Barbara's Center for Nanomedicine (CNM), in collaboration with Victor Nizet, M.D., at UC San Diego and Markus Sperandio, M.D., at the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich.

"This type of study had never been done before and the results were shocking," says Yang. "We observed the onset of a progressive and irreversible inflammatory disease caused by previous infections. That was quite surprising because the pathogen had been easily cleared by the host."

"These findings are of potential great concern to the human population," adds Marth. "Food contamination at these low bacterial levels is likely to be more common than we recognize, while symptoms could be nonexistent or mild and disappear in a day or two without treatment. Repeated over time, we find that such minor infections are sufficient to trigger disease months and perhaps years later, depending upon the number and timing of infections an individual has experienced over his or her lifetime."

The good news is that ways to boost IAP levels and inhibit neuraminidase activity exist. IAP augmentation can be as simple as adding the enzyme to drinking water. Neuraminidase inhibition can be achieved using a currently marketed antiviral neuraminidase inhibitor, a drug that is used to prevent influenza viral infections.

I'm curious if it is similar with infections other than food poisoning? Being a mechanic all my life I have had thousands of infections from skinned knuckles and cut hands.
I have pain in my abdomen that Drs can't seem to treat correctly.
It has affected my appetite and since I am not eating up my food as quickly as I used to I throw much of it away because it goes stale, moldy or spoiled. I'm wondering if my taste threshold causes me to consume some foods that do give me repeated minor food poisoning?

I have new respect for expiration dates - heading to the fridge to check my condiments.

I was mildly poisoned by food my entire marriage.

not quite as shocking as getting
run over by a cement truck, but then
again we all have to go sometime, don't we ?