Results of the three-year surveillance by the Italian SALM-NET System: human isolates of Salmonella serotypes.

Within the wide framework of the European Community Human Salmonella Surveillance Project (SALM-NET), the data on the most commonly isolated serotypes in Italy from January 1994 to December 1996 are reported. The total data included in the Italian SALM-NET data base account for 34,412 Salmonella isolates. In the list of the most frequent isolates, S. enteritidis ranked always first in the years 1994, 1995 and 1996 with 5435 (43.4%), 4589 (37.1%) and 4044 (42.4%), respectively, over the total number of Salmonella isolates. This serotype is followed by S. typhimurium in the list of the top ten isolates, with 2236 (17.9%), 2831 (22.9%) and 2239 (23.5%). The other serotypes included in this list accounted for a much lower number and percentages ranging from 505 isolates of S. derby (4.0%) to 99 isolates of S. brandenburg (0.8%).