Travelers Diarrhea

Travellers’ diarrhea is the most common illness that affects travellers. It is easily spread from person-to-person or by consuming contaminated food or water. Travellers’ diarrhea is caused by many different bacteria such as E. coli, Salmonella, Shigella, Campylobacter and etc. Travellers’ diarrhea is spread by eating food or drinking water that is contaminated or through person-to-person contact due to poor hygiene. Traveler's diarrhea is listed as a "rare disease" by the Office of Rare Diseases (ORD) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This means that Traveler's diarrhea, or a subtype of Traveler's diarrhea, affects less than 200,000 people in the US population.

The most important treatment is to maintain hydration  Drink lots of fluids: This is especially important for children, people with existing health problems and the elderly. In moderate to severe cases, use oral rehydration solutions.Remember to always use safe water (boiled, disinfected or from a commercially sealed bottle) to drink or to mix your oral hydration solutions. Helsinki University Hospital Laboratory developed a low-cost, high-throughput qPCR assay for use in routine diagnostic analysis and research. It detects the pathogenic bacteria most commonly associated with TD in stool samples with 100% sensitivity and specificity, compared with reference methods.