Heat resistance weakens salmonella
Salmonella can survive in hot food, but only in a weakened form that doesn’t make us sick.
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Over 1,000 people fall ill with a Salmonella infection every year in Switzerland, caused by contaminated food. Salmonella can cope with adverse conditions including temperatures of up to almost 60 degrees Celsius and can thus survive when food is prepared hot. However, Médéric Diard from the Biozentrum of the University of Basel, together with several other colleagues, has discovered that the virulence of Salmonella is reduced when they survive heat stress. Diard and Co. have now demonstrated that repeated exposure to high temperatures can be used to favour milder variants of Salmonella that are unable to trigger intestinal inflammation.
