Salmonella enterica

A quick search reveals some are very nasty, some are not so nasty - you need to know the exact strain or serotype really.

So they are arguable commensals (the non-pathogenic ones) in a very round about kinda way. Widespread exposure type thing from food/animals. But it is debatable.

Looks like they will show up in ~3-10% of colon bacteria samples. So some others will undoubtably have them as well.

Chances are good that if you are looking at some fecal microbiome result and it it showing them - and you're not having lot's of diarrhea, bleeding, stomach discomfort etc then there is nothing to worry about. However if you are having some symptoms it may be worth getting your doctor to do some tests just simply to rule it out.

I'm sure it's fine, but you never know... besides we pay crazy taxes for health care so it's not out of pocket per-say if you can find a doc to do so. What the heck, might be the best test you ever do, might be nothing at all though - but if it's free...

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Coincidentally, I literally just turned off a documentary on salmonella tonight about how messed up the rules are in the States. Basically, let's say you got sick eating chicken... Even if 100's of people are getting sick and they all ate the same brand of chicken, unless you just happen to have a frozen package of the very same food that made you sick, with the same dates and production facility etc in your freezer and the government can isolate the very same strain of bacteria from it as what they isolated from you, which will be a serotype of salmonella enteric, there is nothing whatsoever the government can do to force a recall no matter how many people are getting sick and/or dying. It's 100% voluntary recall by the food processing company owners. It's crazy. The federal department of agriculture actually has zero power to enforce salmonella issues even though they are the ones providing the inspectors inside food processing facilities. Plus it went on about how testing is done on by federal inspectors on whole chickens, but something like 90% of all cases of salmonella outbreaks come from breasts and chicken parts. Which they rarely even test. Was brutal to watch. Also it was a little horrifying to see what mass agriculture does to the chickens...

Anyway, thats what I managed to dig up - and watch tonight. Plus I decided to eat chicken from the farm down the road from now on :)

For what it's worth, and not knowing the exact spp. or strain, it's not worth much, but a guy in our CCFA support group got Salmonella from a restaurant (seafood from China), ended up in the hospital, lost 60 pounds and then developed UC.