Clostridium perfringens

Development of a novel polymerase spiral reaction (PSR) assay for rapid and visual detection of Clostridium perfringens in meat

“…Similarly, the detection limit of the established PSR assay (980 CFU/g) in artificially contaminated pork was 100 fold better than the end-point PCR (9.8 × 10 4 CFU/g). This result is noteworthy as 10 5 CFU/g of food is the infectious dose of C. perfringens reported in foods linked to foodborne outbreaks ( Garcia et al, 2019 ). Thus our PSR assay may serve as a handy tool for rapid and culture independent detection of C. perfringens in food products and recall of contaminated ones.…”

“…The extensive presence of C. perfringens in the environment, human and animal excreta leads to the easy contamination of food ( Grass et al, 2013 ). The attack rate of food poisoning outbreaks due to C. perfringens can be as high as 70% ( Garcia et al, 2019 ). The rapid movement of meat foods in the food chain does not permit testing with time-taking conventional methods ( Momin et al, 2020 ).…”

“…Recently in France, 43.26% of cpe -negative C. perfringens strains were implicated in foodborne outbreaks and it was not detected in strains associated with 13 outbreaks ( Abdelrahim et al., 2019 ). C. perfringens spores are exceptionally resistant to conditions generally employed in the food industry to control bacterial growth, including chemical preservatives, low or high temperature or pH, osmotic pressure, desiccation and radiation ( Garcia et al., 2019 ). Protein rich foods like meat are ideal for the growth of C. perfringens as it requires several amino acids and vitamins.…”

“…And this also emphasizes the need for a rapid on-site technique to detect this pathogen in food particularly in meat. Many laboratories do not regularly test C. perfringens as it requires anaerobic culturing, which is labour and resource intensive ( Garcia et al, 2019 ). While a range of DNA based detection techniques like end-point PCR ( Baez and Juneja, 1995 ), real-time PCR ( Kaneko et al, 2011 ; Chon et al, 2012 ) are existing, they are not appropriate for on-site testing as they entail technical expertise, costly equipments, and complex operation protocols, etc ( Hara-Kudo et al, 2005 ; Milton et al, 2020a ).…”

Hallstatt miners consumed blue cheese and beer during the Iron Age and retained a non-Westernized gut microbiome until the Baroque period

“…Therefore, we assume that the archaeon was introduced from the environment via the salt crystals (Figure S1B). In the paleofeces samples 2604 and 2611, we also identified Clostridium perfringens, a known intestinal foodborne pathogen, 23 that also occurs free living in the soil and other environments. 24 Since an infection with C. perfringens causes acute diarrhea and the paleofeces does not indicate any characteristics pointing to that disease, we assume that the presence of this bacterium is due to an environmental contaminant rather than a remnant of food spoilage in the miners' gut.…”