Four Foodborne Disease Outbreaks Caused by a New Type of Enterotoxin-Producing Clostridium perfringens

Abstract

The epidemiological and bacteriological investigations on four foodborne outbreaks caused by a new type of enterotoxinproducing Clostridium perfringens are described. C. perfringens isolated from patients of these outbreaks did not produce any known enterotoxin and did not carry the C. perfringens enterotoxin gene. However, the culture filtrates of these isolates induced the accumulation of fluid in rabbit ileal loop tests. The molecular weight of the new enterotoxin may be between 50,000 and 100,000, although the known C. perfringens enterotoxin is ca. 35,000. This new enterotoxin was heat labile, and its biological activities were inactivated by heating for 5 min at 60°C. The new enterotoxin was sensitive to pH values higher than 11.0 and protease treatment but was resistant to trypsin treatment. These results suggest that the new enterotoxin may be a protein. Although C. perfringens enterotoxin induced morphological changes in Vero cells, the changes induced by the new enterotoxin differed from those by the known C. perfringens enterotoxin. The new enterotoxin also induced morphological changes in L929 cells, whereas the known C. perfringens enterotoxin did not, because L929 cells lacked an appropriate enterotoxin receptor. Although C. perfringens enterotoxin is recognized as the only diarrheagenic toxin responsible for C. perfringens foodborne outbreaks, the results of the present study indicate that C. perfringens isolated from these four outbreaks produced a new type of enterotoxin.

A diagnosis of the microbiological quality of dehydrated bee-pollen produced in Brazil

“…Clostridium perfringens gastroenteritis is caused by eating food contaminated with enterotoxin produced by the bacteria and the most common symptoms are diarrhoea and abdominal pain (Monma et al . ). Botulinum neurotoxin produced by C. botulinium can causes a serious neuroparalytic illness (Vasquez ).…”

Prevalence and Genetic Diversity of Toxin Genes in Clinical Isolates of Clostridium perfringens: Coexistence of Alpha-Toxin Variant and Binary Enterotoxin Genes (bec/cpile)

“…BEC/CPILE is a novel enterotoxin consisting of two proteins, among which the smaller component (BECa/CPILE-a) has ADP-ribosylating activity on actin [3,4]. This toxin was identified in C. perfringens without having cpe which caused food poisoning outbreaks in Japan [34]. Although little is known about the prevalence of bec/cpile in C. perfringens isolates, a single survey indicated 0.78% positivity of bec/cpile among isolates from diarrheal patients, which was much lower than that of cpe (7.8%) [11].…”

Clostridium perfringens as Foodborne Pathogen in Broiler Production: Pathophysiology and Potential Strategies for Controlling Necrotic Enteritis

“…Beef and poultry, as well as other meat products, are the most important vehicles for this microorganism [ 9 , 10 , 11 ], although it has also been recovered from vegetables [ 12 ] and spices [ 13 ]. Butler et al (2015) [ 14 ] described the transmission of C. perfringens through water by contact with animals and transmission from person to person.…”