The primary prevention methods are improved sanitation and personal and food hygiene, but a low-cost and efficacious vaccine would complement these methods.Since shigellosis is spread very quickly among children, keeping infected children out of daycare for 24 hours after their symptoms have disappeared, will decrease the occurrence of shigellosis in daycares. Vaccine
Currently, no licensed vaccine targeting Shigella exists. Several vaccine candidates for Shigella are in various stages of development including live attenuated, conjugate, ribosomal, and proteosome vaccines. Shigella has been a longstanding World Health Organization target for vaccine development, and sharp declines in age-specific diarrhea/dysentery attack rates for this pathogen indicate that natural immunity does develop following exposure; thus, vaccination to prevent the disease should be feasible. Shigellosis is resistant to many antibiotics used to treat the disease, so vaccination is an important part of the strategy to reduce morbidity and mortality. Treatment
Treatment consists mainly of replacing fluids and salts lost because of diarrhea. Replacement by mouth is satisfactory for most people, but some may need to receive fluids intravenously. Antidiarrheal drugs (such as diphenoxylate or loperamide) may prolong the infection and should not be used. Antibiotics
Antibiotics should only be used in severe cases or for certain populations with mild symptoms (elderly, immunocompromised, food service industry workers, child care workers). For Shigella-associated diarrhea, antibiotics shorten the length of infection, but they are usually avoided in mild cases because many Shigella strains are becoming resistant to common antibiotics.
In the large intestine, the bacteria cause cell injury and the beginning stages of Shigellosis via two main mechanisms: direct invasion of epithelial cells in the large intestine and production of enterotoxin 1 and enterotoxin 2.Unlike other bacteria, Shigella is not destroyed by the gastric acid in the stomach. As a result, it takes only 10 to 200 cells to cause an infection. This infectious dose is several order of magnitudes smaller than that of other species of bacteria (e.g. cholera, caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae, has an infectious dose between 108 and 1011 cells). Diagnosis
The diagnosis of shigellosis is made by isolating the organism from diarrheal fecal sample cultures. Shigella species are negative for motility and are generally not lactose fermenters, but S. sonnei can ferment lactose. They typically do not produce gas from carbohydrates (with the exception of certain strains of S. flexneri) and tend to be overall biochemically inert. Shigella should also be urea hydrolysis negative. When inoculated to a triple sugar iron slant, they react as follows: K/A, gas -, and H2S -. Indole reactions are mixed, positive and negative, with the exception of S. sonnei, which is always indole negative. Growth on Hektoen enteric agar produces bluish-green colonies for Shigella and bluish-green colonies with black centers for Salmonella. Prevention
Simple precautions can be taken to prevent getting shigellosis: wash hands before handling food and thoroughly cook all food before eating.