Diagnosis and Clinical Features of Food Poisoning

Ji Hwan Bang; Hong Bin Kim

doi:10.5124/jkma.2007.50.7.592

J Korean Med Assoc > Volume 50(7); 2007 > Article

Bang and Kim: Diagnosis and Clinical Features of Food Poisoning

Focused Issue of This Month

Food Poisoning

Journal of the Korean Medical Association

Journal of the Korean Medical Association 2007; 50(7): 592-599.

Published online: July 31, 2007

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5124/jkma.2007.50.7.592

Diagnosis and Clinical Features of Food Poisoning

Ji Hwan Bang, MD, Hong Bin Kim, MD

¹Center for Infectious Diseases, National Medical Center, Korea. ksbkhb@chollian.net

²Department of Internal Medicine, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Korea. hbkimmd@snu.ac.kr

Abstract

Frequent large outbreaks of food poisoning or foodborne diseases are emerging problems in Korea. As for individual cases, most of food poisoning or foodborne diseases are difficult to diagnose based solely on clinical features. On the other hand, in case of large outbreaks, clinical features such as the incubation period, presence or degree of fever and the severity of upper gastrointestinal tract symptoms could be useful for the differential diagnosis. In this review, we suggest key clinical characteristics and standard laboratory diagnostic methods of epidemiologically important food poisoning or foodborne diseases.

Food poisoning; Differential diagnosis

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Table 1

Nonnflammatory vs inflammatory diarrhea in food-borne diseases

^*: Diarrhea might be absent

^†: V. parahemolyticus induced diarrhea may be presented as both noninflammatory and inflammatory diarrhea

Table 2

Clinical features of selected food-borne diseases