KFC - Kentucky Fried Campylobacteriosis

Fancy a KFC chicken bucket and cold glass of milk?...think again!

About 50 - 74 billion chickens are slaughtered for food annually! This outnumbers the human population by a ratio of roughly 9 to 1. To further put this into context, the amount of chickens slaughtered for food anually is over 500 times the population of Russia!

A big reason for this is the excessive popularity of fast-food restaurants in the last few decades! As a part of the name, these popular food chains promise consumers a meal in as little time as possible. Now, as fantastic as that may be, this could encourage poor hygeine, rushed cooking and severe bacterial infections such as Campylobacteriosis in certain cases.

This infection is typically rooted from the consumption of undercooked poultry, food stuffs which have been in close proximity to undercooked poultry, raw/pasturised milk, chicken paté - French style spread/dish made from cooked chicken livers and fecal-oral transmisson from symptomatic individuals.

Now, meet Fred. A young American man who works a 9-5 job which happens to be right next to a KFC branch. After his shift, he quite fancies a hot chicken zinger burger, large fries and a diet coke (you know.. for balance lol).

Little does he know, Lydia - the KFC employee making his burger, had arrived almost an hour late for her shift. In fear of being fired, she thought she'd "save time" by deep frying the raw peice of chicken for only half the usual time.. seems sensible right?, WRONG!

After Lydia assembles the burger and hands it to Fred, both parties exchange smiles and seem satisfied. After eating his burger, Fred felt fine till all of a sudden, he did not. This is because that undercooked peice of chicken contained 1 of the 2 strains of Campylobacteriosis - Campylobacter Jejuni & Campylobacter coli.

The bacteria then incubated in Fred for 3 days (although it can incubate in the host from anywhere between 1-5 days), before Fred started to notice his febrile prodrome - pox formation, and soon after intense diarrhea!

He complained of nausea, vomitted frequently, had a distinct fever, abdominal cramps and malaise! For some patients, symptoms usually resolve after 7 days.. not for our friend Fred though.

Unfortunately, Fred developed acute Campylobacteriosis, causing him to develop pseudoapendicitis - right lower quadrant abdominal pain, before more watery and now even bloody diarrhea.... talk about unlucky am I right?

The microscopic nature of Campylobacteriosis is curved-helical rods, gram-negative and motile which can be identified from stool samples of infected patients - Gold standard!

After Fred had visited his local A&E department, the doctors had suggested fluids, a gentle-diet and a course of antibiotics. This regimen included Azithromycin 500mg daily x 3 days but also be Erythromycin 500mg four times daily x 5 days.

After 2 weeks, Fred seemed to not have any symptoms at all anymore! This was fantastic but unfortunately, he suffered from postinfectious complications such as Guillain-Barré syndrome - autoimmune disorder, attacks periphery nerves, causes rapid muscle weekness, numbness, and ocasionally, paralysis! as well as reactive arthrithis - inflammotry arthritis caused as a response to infection.

Dang!! Poor Fred..

Just as a PSA, there is emerging Campylobacter resistance to Fluoroquinolone antibiotics - broad spectrum antibiotics used to treat resistant bacteria, especially in Southeast Asia!

So, next time you see those "hollistic vegans" on your feed convincing you to drink raw milk as it has "healing properties" or you order a KFC and it comes out extremely fast and you're a bit too excited to eat it... think again!

As we say around here, when in doubt.. Azithromycin!!!

Xoxo,

Tehilla.