By Katie Wagner, Staff Writer
Nine Princeton University students and a staff member have contracted salmonella bacteria as of Monday afternoon and university officials suspect about 60 to 70 of the 80 reports of stomach problems made by students and staff over the past week to also have been caused by the bacteria.
Salmonella is most commonly transmitted through food. Symptoms, which include stomach pain, diarrhea, nausea, fever and headache, usually start between six and 72 hours after an individual becomes infected.
”There seems to be an apparent connection between the confirmed cases of salmonella and the 80 other cases,” university spokeswoman Cass Cliatt said Monday.
An ongoing investigation by the university has not identified a single source linking the 10 confirmed cases of salmonella, Ms. Cliatt said.
As voluntary precautionary steps, the university’s dining services has sent 20 categories of food served on campus to labs for testing, closed some of its food stations at the Frist Campus Center, suspended services of a range of food that might be linked to salmonella and changed some food vendors, Ms. Cliatt said.
Ms. Cliatt said that the university typically hears of about 10 to 20 cases of gastroenteritis on campus a week around this time of a year, which produces similar symptoms to a salmonella bacteria infection. Ms. Cliatt said the university suspects recent complaints of diarrhea and stomach pain that do not turn out to be from salmonella bacteria infections will have been from students and staff who have instead contracted gastroenteritis.
The first of the 10 cases of salmonella bacteria on campus was confirmed April 29, Ms. Cliatt said. The salmonella bacteria was discovered through results of a culturing of the student’s stool sample which was conducted in a laboratory.
Health officials from Princeton Regional Health Department, the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services, university officials and the Mercer County Health Department are investigating whether the cases of salmonella are related to 80 other cases of stomach problems at the school, said Donna Leusner, a spokeswoman for the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services.
Discoveries of six of the confirmed cases of salmonella bacteria resulted from interviews with 50 students and staff members conducted as part of the investigation, Ms. Leusner said.
Stool samples of students and staff reporting stomach problems have been taken along with complete food histories and are continuing to be taken, and results from culturing of more samples taken last week are coming in, according to Ms. Cliatt.
