Antimicrobials for treating symptomatic non-typhoidal Salmonella infection

Antibiotics for non-typhoidal Salmonella diarrhoea

Ifeanyi A Onwuezobe1,*, Philip O Oshun2, Chibuzo C Odigwe3

1 University of Uyo Teaching Hospital, Medical Microbiology and Parasitology, Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria
2 Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Department of Medical Microbiology, Lagos, Nigeria
3 Institute of Tropical Disease Research & Prevention, Nigeria Effective Health Care Alliance Programme, Calabar, Cross River State, Nigeria

Antimicrobials for treating symptomatic non-typhoidal Salmonella infection. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2012, Issue 11. Art. No.: CD001167.
To read the full review please follow this link: DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD001167.pub2. 

Non-typhoidal Salmonella (NTS) can cause diarrhoea in people. In this review, we investigated the benefits and safety of antibiotics for treatment of NTS versus placebo or no antibiotic treatment. We found that in otherwise healthy people, treatment with antibiotics did not have any benefit over treatment with no antibiotics. Furthermore, treatment with antibiotics made it more likely that patients would continue to excrete the same organisms for up to one month after treatment. We are unable to comment on the use of antibiotics in very young people, very old people and people who are unable to fight off infection because the trials we identified did not include these patients.