E. coli — the ever present pathogen

摘要

Just 50 years ago E. coli infections were a rarity. However, as the size of poultry flocks grew colisepticaemia began to emerge as a poultry disease of importance. Today it is one of the most important diseases to affect modern poultry production. Colisepticaemia is, as its name implies, a septicaemia or generalised infection caused by the E. coli bacterium. E. coli, or Escherichia coii as it is more correctly called, is a Gram negative rod-shaped bacterium or bacillus.