Gastrointestinal Influenza – Duration

Gastrointestinal Influenza: incubation period

The incubation period describes the duration between the infection with a disease and the appearance of the first symptoms. With a gastrointestinal flu, the incubation period is usually very short (a few hours). In some pathogens, but it can also be days or weeks. As a rule, the gastrointestinal influenza incubation period is between one and seven days, but for each pathogen another period is typical:

• Norovirus and rotavirus: ten to 50 hours
• Salmonella: five to 72 hours (depending on the amount of salmonella ingested)
• EHEC: usually three to four days
• Campylobacter: two to five days
• Shigella (bacterial dysentery): one to four days
• Entamoeba histolytica (amoebic dysentery): one to four weeks
• Food poisoning: one to six hours (Staphylococcus aureus), eight to 16 hours (Clostridium perfringens)

Gastrointestinal Influenza: duration of symptoms

The typical symptom of gastrointestinal influenza is vomiting diarrhea. Vomiting usually begins before diarrhea and stops after one to two days. The diarrhea (diarrhea) is longer, usually between about two and ten days. Diarrhea lasting more than three weeks is called chronic diarrhea. It may, for example, occur in patients with immunodeficiency: The impaired body defense can significantly increase the gastroenteritis duration. Diarrhea lasting for weeks or even months is also possible with a gastrointestinal infection caused by parasites such as amoebae and lamellas.

How long the symptoms last, depends – as well as the incubation period – on the respective pathogen. When salmonella is the trigger, the duration of the gastrointestinal infection is usually only a few days. Although a typical viral gastrointestinal flu often runs violently, it only takes a relatively short time. Three days after the onset of a noro or rotavirus infection, digestion usually returns to normal. Slightly longer is usually caused by Cambylobacter gastrointestinal flu: duration of the symptoms is usually four to five days, but occasionally up to two weeks.

Gastrointestinal Influenza: How Long Infectious?

Once someone is infected with the pathogens of a gastrointestinal flu, he is also contagious to others. This means that he can transmit the disease even before the onset of the first symptoms, ie during the incubation period. Of course, people with gastric flu do not know at this stage that they are already ill.

Even after the signs of the disease subsided, the affected persons excrete the causative germs with the stool for some time. As a result, there is still a risk of infection for a few days, sometimes even weeks, after the recovery has been felt:

• Noroviruses are still measurable in the stool one to two weeks after recovery.
• EHEC can be proven for up to three weeks
• Shigella and Campylobacter even up to four weeks.

While pathogens are present in the stool, contagion is potentially possible, but the likelihood decreases the longer the subject feels well again. In the acute phase of gastrointestinal influenza, the level of excitation in the body is highest, and thus the amount that is excreted in the stool. By fighting by the immune system, the pathogens are steadily less and thus also reduces the risk of infection.

Especially with highly infectious agents such as norovirus but should be respected at least a few days after recovery particularly on hygiene after each flush. This not only reduces the risk of infecting other people but also re-infecting themselves.

Special case permanent separator

People who, after more than ten weeks, excrete bacteria or viruses, even though there are no longer any symptoms, are considered permanent excrements. The affected people often know nothing about it and therefore represent a permanent risk of infection for other people. This condition can be temporary (temporary Dauerausscheider), but also remain lifelong (permanent Dauerausscheider).

However, the probability of becoming a permanent excretor after a gastrointestinal flu is low. In some pathogens, however, there is always a certain residual risk: In salmonellosis, for example, about one to four percent of those affected become asymptomatic permanent excretors. Age seems to be a negative factor, that is, older people are more likely to be persistent than younger ones. As a therapy antibiotics come into question in bacteria.

A well-known permanent separator in the history of medicine was Mary Mallon. The Irish-American cook is said to have infected over 50 people with typhoid fever at the beginning of the 20th century and was therefore called by the press “Typhoid Mary”. But most people do not share this fate with one Gastrointestinal Influenza: duration The disease is usually short.