Nontyphoidal Salmonella causing focal infections in patients admitted at a Spanish general hospital during an 11-year period (1991–2001)

In focal infections (FI) caused by nontyphoidal Salmonella serotypes and recorded at a Spanish hospital 1991–2001, clinical and microbiological features were analyzed. Thirty-five revised episodes were related to infections of the digestive (10), urinary (10), pulmonar (4), vascular (4), osteoarticular (3) and central nervous (3) systems, and with a submaxillary lymph node. At least 16 episodes were associated with previous or concomitant gastroenteritis, 19 with primary or secondary bacteremia, and 18 with underlying diseases of different severity. Eighteen patients were male and 14 female (data were not available for three patients), while 1, 4, 12 and 15 patients were, respectively, categorized as children, young adults, senior adults and elderly. Sources of Salmonella strains were urine (13), blood (11), purulent abscess (8), cerebrospinal fluid (3), peritoneal fluid, pleural fluid, wound exudates, aneurism (2 of each), ascitic fluid, sputum, tracheal aspirate, needle aspirate, bone and lymph node (1 of each) samples. Only 28 Salmonella strains involved in FIs were available for further analysis. They were discriminated into 6 serotypes, and into 13 XbaI macrorestriction, 6 virulence, 11 antimicrobial resistance, 5 integron and 10 plasmid profiles. Broadly, the pattern of serotype distribution of salmonellas involved in FIs matched that of those causing gastroenteritis, with the pandemic Enteritidis and Typhimurium (18 and 6 strains, respectively) being clearly predominant. Within serotype, the same lineages (as revealed by XbaI-macrorestriction analysis as well as R- and V-profiles) were represented in both disease groups, with host-related factors apparently playing a more critical role than the individual strain in the outcome of the disease.