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Clostridioides difficile reservoirs other than humans are becoming increasingly recognized, and the occurrence of the pathogen in shellfish raises concern because spores can survive cooking temperature and edible bivalve mollusks are often consumed raw or poorly cooked. This study was conducted to determine the occurrence of pathogenic C. difficile in retail bivalve mollusks. The microbiological quality of samples was also checked through the isolation of Salmonella spp. and Escherichia coli. We analyzed 129 mollusk samples from different fishmongers and grocery stores in Murcia. C. difficile was isolated from 8.53% (11/129) of the mollusks investigated. Four C. difficile isolates harbored genes for the production of toxin A and B. Salmonella spp . were not isolated from any sample and E. coli was isolated from 1.55% (2/129) of the samples, in both cases in accordance with the current legal requirements for consumption. Our findings indicate that the intake of raw or poorly cooked contaminated bivalve mollusks could be a potential source of C. difficile, leading to a risk for human health.

Contaminated raw meat and meat products with Clostridioides difficile could be a vehicle to spread community-associated C. difficile infection. This study was conducted to determine the occurrence of C. difficile in pork and poultry meat samples (n=325) from retail establishments, and in edible giblet samples (n=36) from a poultry processing plant in Murcia (southeastern Spain). Clostridioides difficile, isolated from samples using selective enrichment prior to isolation on a culture medium, was recovered from 2% (6/361) of the samples overall, all of these being from the poultry processing plant. These isolates were recovered from 17% (6/36) of the edible chicken giblets, which includes 28% (5/18) of the gizzard samples and 6% (1/18) of the liver samples tested. PCR testing of the six C. difficile isolates were toxin A and B negative. These findings demonstrate the survival of C. difficile in gastric acids of gizzards and its possible transmission to other meat products. However, the very low prevalence of C. difficile in the tested samples indicates that retail meat may not be an important source of C. difficile transmission to humans.

During the COVID-19 pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2, new waves have been associated with new variants and have the potential to escape vaccinations. Therefore, it is useful to conduct retrospective genomic surveillance research. Herein, we present a detailed analysis of 88 SARS-CoV-2 genomes belonging to samples taken from COVID-19 patients from October 2020 to April 2021 at the “Reina Sofía” Hospital (Murcia, Spain) focused to variant appeared later. The results at the mentioned stage show the turning point since the 20E (EU1) variant was still prevalent (71.6%), but Alpha was bursting to 14.8%. Concern mutations have been found in 5 genomes classified as 20E (EU1), which were not characteristic of this still little evolved variant. Most of those mutations are found in the spike protein, namely Δ69–70, E484K, Q675H and P681H. However, a relevant deletion in ORF1a at positions 3675–3677 was also identified. These mutations have been reported in many later SARS-CoV-2 lineages, including Omicron. Taken together, our data suggest that preferential emergence mutations could already be present in the early converging evolution. Aside from this, the molecular information has been contrasted with clinical data. Statistical analyses suggest that the correlation between age and severity criteria is significantly higher in the viral samples with more accumulated changes.

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