到底沙门氏菌是个什么东西?

Anderson Cooper, AC 360, cnn Weeknights, 10 ET.

I wanna breakdown exactly, what this is?

It's a type of bacteria. It's common in the environment, and can be on different types of food.

This strain specifically, Salmonella enteriditis is found in chickens. It can carry the bug, or even pass it on to their eggs without getting sick themselves. They can be sort of carriers.

Now if you get salmonella through contaminated eggs or meat, the bacteria goes to lining of small intestine, symptoms can be mild or severe, I mean that's gonna be GI or gastric or testinal symptoms, cramps, nausea, diarrhea, vomiting. It can also cause fever, and cause severe headache. One possible long-term complication, it can get into the joints and cause arthritis, and that can linger for months or even longer.

Mild or severe, most people are gonna recover fully. Complications can be serious. Older people, young babies, and people with immune problems are gonna be most at risk.

In the worst case, the bacteria can get into the blood stream, and causes a severe infection called sepsis, that's life threatening, although with treatment, the fatality rate is still pretty low, about less than a tenth of a percent.

Salmonella makes about 1.3 million people sick every year, that's according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It's neck and neck with Campylobacter, another bacteria, the second most common food-borne illness. The most common by far is Norovirus, that makes about 9 million people sick every year. Big numbers, by contrast, E.coli only makes about 40,000 people sick and Botulism, we talk about that lot, only causes about 50 or 60 cases total every year. Of course those tend to be more severe, sometimes even deadly.