What Are the Symptoms of Campylobacteriosis?

The campylobacter bacteria can sometimes cause food poisoning through ingestion of contaminated food or water. Symptoms of campylobacteriosis are generally related to gastrointestinal effects, although some people show no symptoms. An infection might also have long-term effects. Common symptoms of campylobacteriosis include diarrhea, stomach pain and sometimes vomiting. Cramping pains, fever and occasionally nausea accompany these symptoms, and on occasion, the diarrhea can contain blood.

Campylobacter causes gastrointestinal disease because the bacterium sticks to the wall of the intestine, gets into the top layer of cells and then gets through the top layer and into the lower layers. The bacterium uses a flagellum, which is a propeller-like tail, to move to the intestinal wall and attach there. It also recognizes and moves toward a substance called mucin, which the intestinal wall produces. The bacterium also produces toxins that can break down host cells. This cell invasion capability causes the symptoms of gastroenteritis along with inflammation and damage to the intestinal wall.

These symptoms take two to five days to develop after a person ingests contaminated food or water. The gastrointestinal symptoms subside after about a week of the illness. Some people infected with the bacteria show no symptoms of campylobacteriosis at all.

On rare occasions, in about one out of every 1,000 cases of campylobacteriosis, an affected person can develop a disease of the nerves called Guillain-Barre Syndrome. This disease appears a few weeks after the gastrointestinal symptoms of campylobacteriosis disappear. The immmune system of affected people mistakenly attacks the nerves of the body and causes paralysis, which can take weeks in intensive care to reverse.

Arthritis is another rare complication of campylobacteriosis. People who have immune system problems might also show signs of blood poisoning, such as fever. Although these complications and symptoms are rare, campylobacteriosis is one of the most common causes of food poisoning.

The symptoms of campylobacteriosis, such as diarrhea, also can be caused by many other infectious organisms, so the presence of those symptoms does not definitely indicate that campylobacter is the cause of an illness. Culturing bacteria from stool samples is the best way of identifying the organism that caused a bout of food poisoning. Most cases of campylobacteriosis are mild enough not to warrant medical intervention.