Epidemiological studies on Clostridium perfringens food poisoning in retail foods

Clostridium perfringens is an important anaerobic pathogen causing food-borne gastrointestinal (GI) diseases in humans and animals. Meat and meat products are the most common vehicles of C. perfringens type A food poisoning. Contamination of meat by the intestinal contents of slaughtered animals may serve as an important source of this pathogen to the food supply. One hundred and fifty-five non-outbreak food samples were obtained from meat and retail food and examined for the presence of C. perfringens. Multiplex polymerase chain reaction assay to determine the toxin genotype of C. perfringens isolates, and extraction and purification of C. perfringens enterotoxin from enterotoxin gene (cpe)-positive isolates were carried out. The homogeneity of the purified enterotoxin was demonstrated by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. In addition, stool samples were collected from 150 persons who had been in contact with animals, and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays were carried out for the qualitative determination of C. perfringens enterotoxin in the stool samples. The results demonstrated that approximately 2.6% of the tested meat and retail meat samples were contaminated with cpe-positive C. perfringens. The recommended laboratory criteria used to implicate C. perfringens in food-borne disease should involve the detection of C. perfringens enterotoxin production or the presence of the cpe gene in foods or faeces, or in the suspected C. perfringens isolates. In the present study some isolates such as tuna contained the enterotoxin gene although they had a low count of C. perfringens.