What is the effect of E. coli on the human body?
Role as normal flora E. coli normally colonizes an infant’s gastrointestinal tract within 40 hours of birth, arriving with food or water or with the individuals handling the child. In the bowel, it adheres to the mucus of the large intestine. It is the primary facultative organism of the human gastrointestinal tract. As long as these bacteria do not acquire genetic elements encoding for virulence factors, they remain benign commensals. Therapeutic use of nonpathogenic E. coli Nonpathogenic Escherichia coli strain Nissle 1917 is used as a probiotic agent in medicine, mainly for the treatment of various gastroenterological diseases, including inflammatory bowel disease. Role in disease Virulent strains of E. coli can cause gastroenteritis, urinary tract infections, and neonatal meningitis. In rarer cases, virulent strains are also responsible for hæmolytic-uremic syndrome (HUS), peritonitis, mastitis, septicemia and Gram-negative pneumonia. For more info medical biochem and microbio woul
