Mild food poisoning usually runs its course within a week. Severe food poisoning could cause paralysis, kidney damage and other lasting complications, including damage to the large intestine. The potential for severe damage depends partly on the type of pathogen causing the illness, since the toxicity of different strains varies. Your state of health before the illness also affects the outcome. Even treatment carries some risk, since antibiotics could clear the way for another round of severe infection.
Food Poisoning
Health professionals refer to any illness caused by food or food-borne pathogens as food poisoning, including poisoning by botulism, mushrooms or seafood. Dangerous strains of bacteria or algae cause the type of illness most likely to damage your colon. Unsanitary food or water carries the pathogens, and when swallowed the organisms multiply in your digestive tract. As soon as four hours after ingestion, the first symptoms of nausea, cramps and diarrhea appear as the colony of pathogens produces toxic compounds inside your stomach and intestines. Some organisms such as Shigella and E. coli damage the lining of the gut, causing bloody diarrhea.
Colon Damage
Your intestines react to toxins by releasing watery fluid that flushes poisons and organisms out. If your diarrhea lasts more than five days, your stool includes blood or pus or you experience severe abdominal pain, see your doctor immediately. Hemorrhagic colitis, or diarrhea along with significant volumes of blood, often resolves naturally within a week, according to Iowa State University. If not treated, a severe case could scar the colon with inflexible strictures or perforate the intestinal wall. Food poisoning will not cause sudden rupture of the colon but can lead to fatal complications.
Complications
If both invading organisms and beneficial bacteria living in your gut die from an antibiotic treatment, a bacterium called Clostridium difficile could cause a recurrence of intestinal bleeding. C. difficile normally lives in the human intestine in small numbers. When certain antibiotics, such as ampicillin, eliminate other bacteria, C. difficile can cause pseudomembranous colitis, an inflammation that could perforate the intestinal walls. Any hole in the colon releases body waste and bacteria into the abdominal cavity, putting you at risk of peritonitis. Severe food poisoning can also cause acute ischemic colitis, the death of a segment of intestine.
Consequences
Perforations in the intestine due to food poisoning can cause secondary peritonitis, an inflammation of the abdomen's interior. Antibiotics can fight the infection, but physicians must close the hole surgically. Ischemic colitis results when the blood supply to part of your colon fails. Severe damage from E. coli or other food-borne pathogens could be the cause. Immediate treatment might restore blood flow, but if tissue dies, surgeons can remove an entire section of dead colon to prevent gangrene. Gangrene occurs when dead tissue rots. Bacteria infecting the dead tissue spread rapidly to living tissue. Untreated internal gangrene is often fatal.
References
- University of Maryland Medical Center: Food Poisoning
- University of Maryland Medical Center: Diarrhea -- All Information
- The Center for Food Security & Public Health; Enterohemorrhagic Escherichia Coli Infections; March 2009
- Drexel University College of Medicine: Pseudomembranous Colitis
- "Clinical Infectious Diseases"; Colonic Necrosis and Perforation Secondary to Escherichia Coli...; Gary R. Kravitz; February 2002
- MayoClinic.com; Gangrene; August 2011
