Further evidence for staphylococcal food poisoning outbreaks caused by egc-encoded enterotoxins

Staphylococcal food poisoning represents the most prevalent foodborne intoxication worldwide. It is caused by oral intake of enterotoxins preformed by Staphylococcus aureus in food. The relevance of newly described enterotoxins in outbreaks of staphylococcal food poisoning is controversially discuss...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Toxins 2015-03, Vol.7 (3), p.997-1004
Main Authors: Johler, Sophia, Giannini, Petra, Jermini, Marco, Hummerjohann, Jörg, Baumgartner, Andreas, Stephan, Roger
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Cheese - microbiology
Dairy products
Disease Outbreaks
DNA, Bacterial - genetics
enterotoxin
Enterotoxins - isolation & purification
Food
Food Contamination
Food Microbiology
Genotyping Techniques
Goats
Humans
Multigene Family
Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis
outbreak investigation
Outbreaks
Poisoning
Public health
Risk Factors
seg
sei
staphylococcal food poisoning
Staphylococcal Food Poisoning - diagnosis
Staphylococcal Food Poisoning - epidemiology
Staphylococcus aureus
Staphylococcus aureus - classification
Staphylococcus aureus - isolation & purification
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Summary:Staphylococcal food poisoning represents the most prevalent foodborne intoxication worldwide. It is caused by oral intake of enterotoxins preformed by Staphylococcus aureus in food. The relevance of newly described enterotoxins in outbreaks of staphylococcal food poisoning is controversially discussed. Although the staphylococcal enterotoxins SEG, SEI, SEM, SEN, and SEO elicit emesis in a monkey feeding assay, there has been no conclusive proof of their emetic activity in humans. In this study, we provide further evidence suggesting that one of these enterotoxins or a combination of SEG, SEI, SEM, SEN, and SEO cause staphylococcal food poisoning. We investigated two outbreaks registered with the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health, in which only Staphylococcus aureus strains harboring the egc cluster, including seg, sei, sem, sen, and seo linked to typical signs of staphylococcal food poisoning were isolated. The outbreaks were caused by consumption of raw goat cheese and semi-hard goat cheese, and were linked to strains assigned to CC45 (agr type I) and CC9 (agr type II), respectively. These outbreaks provide further evidence that newly-described staphylococcal enterotoxins are likely to cause staphylococcal food poisoning in humans.
ISSN:2072-6651
2072-6651
DOI:10.3390/toxins7030997