Acute gastroenteritis is one of the most common illnesses affecting man and may be caused by a large variety of different microbes.
The condition affects mainly children and the elderly, but increasingly also adults of all ages, often following foreign travel or the ingestion of contaminated food and water.
There are agents, many of which cause acute gastroenteritis, that are recognized as known or possible causes of foodborne illness, but for which there were insufficient data to make reliable estimates of incidence. This category includes infectious agents such as Aeromonas spp., Edwardsiella spp., and Plesiomonas spp., and non-infectious agents such as mushroom and marine biotoxins, metals and other inorganic toxins.
In Africa, Asia and Latin America, there are about 1000 million cases of gastroenteritis per year in children under the age of 5, which leads to 5 million deaths. In Mexico and Thailand, half of the children aged 0-4 years suffer from the Campylobacter-induced enteritis.
Foodborne gastroenteritis
