Campylobacteriosis is a bacterial infection of the intestines caused by Campylobacter, one of the most common causes of foodborne illness in the United States. The most frequent source is raw or undercooked poultry, and symptoms typically appear within 2 to 5 days of exposure. Most people recover on their own without antibiotics, but in rare cases the infection can trigger serious complications affecting the joints or nervous system.
How You Get Infected
The bacteria live in the intestines of poultry, cattle, and other animals, often without making the animals visibly sick. Eating undercooked chicken or turkey is the single most common route of infection, but it’s far from the only one. Contaminated seafood, meat, and produce can all carry the bacteria, as can unpasteurized milk and dairy products.
Cross-contamination in the kitchen is a major and often overlooked pathway. If you slice vegetables on a cutting board that just held raw chicken, or use the same knife without washing it, you can transfer enough bacteria to cause illness. Untreated drinking water, particularly from streams or wells, is another source. And direct contact with animals, including their food bowls, bedding, cages, and feces, can spread the infection. Outbreaks have even been traced to pet store puppies.
Person-to-person transmission is uncommon compared to foodborne routes, but young children in diapers who are infected can spread it to caregivers.
What Symptoms Feel Like
After an incubation period of 2 to 5 days, the infection hits the gut hard. The hallmark symptom is diarrhea, which is often bloody. That’s accompanied by abdominal cramping and pain that can be severe enough to mimic appendicitis. Fever, nausea, and sometimes vomiting round out the picture.
What’s happening inside: the bacteria invade cells starting in the lower part of the small intestine and then spread into the colon. They damage the tips of the tiny finger-like projections (villi) that line the gut wall and help absorb nutrients. The bacteria also produce toxins and have a way of hiding from the immune system once inside cells, which is part of why symptoms can be intense even though the infection is usually self-limiting. Most people feel significantly better within a week, though some experience lingering fatigue or loose stools for a few days beyond that.
How It’s Diagnosed
Campylobacteriosis is confirmed through a stool sample. The traditional approach is bacterial culture, where a lab grows the organism under specific low-oxygen conditions at elevated temperatures. More modern labs also use molecular tests (PCR) that detect the bacteria’s genetic material directly, which can return results faster and identify the specific species involved. Your doctor may also order testing to check whether the bacteria are resistant to certain antibiotics, which can guide treatment if you’re sick enough to need medication.
Treatment and Recovery
The most important part of treatment is staying hydrated. Frequent diarrhea pulls a lot of fluid and electrolytes out of your body, and replacing them with water, broth, or oral rehydration solutions is the priority. Most people recover fully without antibiotics.
Antibiotics are reserved for severe cases, including high fever, bloody diarrhea that isn’t improving, or prolonged illness. They’re also more likely to be prescribed for people at higher risk of complications: young children, older adults, pregnant individuals, and anyone with a weakened immune system. If resistance testing shows the bacteria won’t respond to a standard antibiotic, your doctor will adjust accordingly.
Complications Worth Knowing About
Guillain-Barré Syndrome
The most serious known complication is Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS), a condition where the immune system attacks the body’s own nerves, causing weakness and sometimes paralysis. This happens because certain strains of Campylobacter have surface molecules that resemble components of human nerve tissue. The immune response triggered by the infection can mistakenly target those nerves in the weeks following illness.
The risk to any individual patient is low. One large study of over 9,300 Campylobacter patients found that roughly 2 in 10,000 developed probable GBS within 8 weeks of their diagnosis. But because campylobacteriosis is so common overall, the infection accounts for a meaningful share of all GBS cases nationally, estimated at anywhere from 5% to 41%.
Reactive Arthritis
Some people develop joint pain and swelling weeks after the gut infection has cleared. This reactive arthritis most commonly affects the knees, ankles, and feet and can also involve tendons and the tissues where tendons attach to bone. Skin, eye, and even cardiac symptoms have been reported alongside the joint problems. About 5% of people who develop reactive arthritis after Campylobacter infection go on to have chronic or relapsing joint symptoms. In rare cases, particularly in people who carry a specific genetic marker (HLA-B27), joint flare-ups have been documented years after the original infection. People whose gastrointestinal symptoms last longer during the initial illness appear to be at higher risk for these musculoskeletal complications.
Preventing Campylobacteriosis
Almost all cases are preventable with basic food safety and hygiene habits. The most critical step is cooking poultry to an internal temperature of 165°F, confirmed with a food thermometer. Other meats have their own safe temperatures: 145°F for whole cuts of beef, pork, lamb, and veal (with a 3-minute rest before cutting), and 160°F for ground versions of those meats. Fish should also reach 145°F.
In the kitchen, keeping raw and cooked foods separate is essential. Use dedicated cutting boards for raw meat and poultry, and wash boards, knives, countertops, and dishes with hot soapy water after they touch raw animal products. Never put cooked food back on a plate that held raw meat.
Outside the kitchen, wash your hands after handling animals, cleaning up after pets, or visiting farms and petting zoos. Avoid drinking untreated water from lakes, streams, or questionable wells. And skip unpasteurized milk and dairy products, which have been linked to multiple Campylobacter outbreaks over the years.