What Are the Clinical Manifestations of Food Poisoning in Children? How to Prevent and Treat It?

What Are the Clinical Manifestations of Food Poisoning in children? How to Prevent and Treat It?

Food poisoning in children refers to poisoning caused by consuming food contaminated with bacterial toxins, fungi, toxic substances, or foods containing toxins. The symptoms of food poisoning mainly include nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, and diarrhea. In severe cases, fever, dehydration, acidosis, and even shock and coma may occur. Within a short period, symptoms such as cold extremities, decreased body temperature, pale or bluish complexion, sweating, convulsions, difficulty swallowing, and breathing may develop. If not promptly treated, food poisoning can often lead to death.

Prevention: Meat should not be repeatedly thawed. Experiments have shown that bacteria continue to multiply in meat when repeatedly thawed. In a span of five days, meat was first placed in the refrigerator for freezing, then thawed, and the trend of bacterial growth was observed. After four cycles of freezing and thawing, the bacterial count was about 15 times higher than the initial non-frozen test results, which is quite surprising.

For children, the following points should be noted to prevent food poisoning:

• Avoid eating discolored, spoiled, or foul-smelling food.

• Leftover food should be boiled after meals and stored properly before the next consumption.

• When preparing food, pay attention to using separate cutting boards for raw and cooked food to prevent contamination.

• Avoid eating unfamiliar wild vegetables and mushrooms. Poisonous mushrooms often exhibit the following characteristics: mushroom caps with warts or scales, white or light-colored (not brown) gills under the mushroom, thin leaf-like gills at the bottom, a ring on the upper part of the stem, a skirt-like ring on the lower part of the stem, and a bulbous base of the stem. Additionally, during summer when consuming cold dishes, fresh vegetables should be chosen, washed thoroughly with water, and blanched in boiling water before seasoning with salt, wine, and vinegar.

• When taking children to restaurants for seafood, beware of marine Vibrio, a bacterium that can cause fatal sepsis. The bacterium can enter the body through the mouth, skin on the fingers, mucosal wounds, or infected wounds, leading to severe sepsis. Symptoms may appear 1 to 2 weeks after infection. However, the bacterium has a fatal weakness—it is not heat-resistant. It can be killed at a water temperature of 70°C. As long as we do not eat raw seafood, we will not be affected.

• Be cautious when eating crayfish. They may contain large amounts of organophosphate pesticides and heavy metal residues, leading to "rhabdomyolysis." Crayfish can also be an intermediate host for lung flukes. Processing methods such as baking, frying, pickling, and marinating may not completely eliminate lung fluke cysts that crayfish might carry. Steaming at temperatures above 100°C for at least 10 minutes ensures that lung fluke cysts are killed. Crayfish raised in sewage usually accumulate heavy metals in their heads, so it is recommended not to eat the heads.

• Freshwater products have fewer types of biotoxins that cause food poisoning, while marine products are the main source of biotoxin-induced food poisoning. There are over 20,000 food poisoning cases worldwide each year caused by toxic fish and shellfish, with a mortality rate of about 1%. The most common toxins include pufferfish toxin, shellfish toxin, histamine toxin, saxitoxin, and more. Due to deteriorating marine environments and global warming, many nearshore areas suffer from severe pollution and frequent red tides, leading to higher toxin levels in marine organisms.

When doctors encounter children with food poisoning symptoms after consuming fish, they should consider the possibility of fish poisoning. A few hours after eating toxic fish, children may experience symptoms such as abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, bitter taste, pale complexion, bradycardia, low blood pressure, and tinnitus. While most cases recover in a few days with symptomatic and supportive treatment, severe cases can progress rapidly, involving multiple organs and leading to consciousness disorders, requiring prompt medical attention.