Interestingly, Amel and Amina (2008) found that VBNC S. typhimurium cells were only recovered into culturable cells by oral administration but not by intraperitoneal injection in mice, indicating that the intestinal environment might be an essential condition for resuscitation. However, Habimana et al. (2014) demonstrated that S. typhimurium failed to resuscitate during passage through the gastrointestinal tract. We speculate that there may be several reasons for the different pathogenic characteristics of the same strain in mice. First, the strains of S. typhimurium were not the same in the two experiments; the former was LT4 and the latter was ATCC 14028. Second, the differences between the experimental animals in the two experiments may have affected the results of the experiment, such as the different genders and ages. Third, the pressure that caused the bacteria to enter the VBNC state and the induction method may determine the resuscitation ability of VBNC cells. As shown in Table 1, most of the VBNC cell resuscitation methods are based on the method of induction, mainly stress relief, such as E. coli O157:H7 induced by low temperature and the corresponding increase in temperature for resuscitation. A similar hypothesis was also proposed by Habimana, who proposed that the phenomenon was dependent on how the pathogens were originally induced into a non-culturable state (Habimana et al., 2014). The specific cause of this phenomenon is still uncertain, requiring further experiments to reach a definitive conclusion.