The ‘Behind the Headlines’ service from NHS Choices has featured a quality assessment of press reports that “a potentially deadly strain of salmonella that is resistant to drugs has been identified in Britain, and the strain – called S. Kentucky – has spread to these shores from poultry imported from Africa and the Middle East” (Daily Mirror).

The news report was based on a cross sectional analysis of national salmonella surveillance systems from France, England and Wales, Denmark and the US published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases. The researchers focused on surveillance data for a specific salmonella type, S. Kentucky, and aimed to estimate how many infections with a drug-resistant strain of S. Kentucky had occurred between 2000 and 2008 in the countries. The researchers concluded that the increase in S. Kentucky cases found in France, England and Wales and Denmark were due mainly to increases in the number of cases resistant to the antibiotic ciprofloxacin. They also suggest that the drug resistant strain originated in Egypt, but are now found throughout Africa and the Middle East. Farms and food producers are in these regions are likely to have reservoirs of drug resistant S. Kentucky, and cases appearing in European and North American countries are likely to be due to the importing of contaminated food in addition to travel.

The Behind the Headlines assessment concludes that the study was well-conducted and highlights the increasing number of cases of a certain type of drug-resistant salmonella infections. However, it is important to remember that the study looked at just one type of salmonella, S. Kentucky, which makes up just a small proportion of reported salmonella cases. While the number of drug-resistant S. Kentucky cases in England and Wales does appear to be rising, the number of infections is still low.