Detection and typing of Clostridium perfringens in some retail chicken meat products

Abstract

Clostridium perfringens is considered as one of major food poisoning bacteria; which may refer to different lethal toxins production including C. perfringens enterotoxin. C. perfringens toxins have been contributed in many diseases in human being especially C. perfringens type A enterotoxin food poisoning. A total of 125 random raw and half cooked chicken meat samples represented by (breast, thigh, nuggets, panee and frankfurter “25 of each”) were collected from various retail stores and supermarkets in Qualyubia governorate to investigate the presence of C. perfringens bacteriologically and detect the cpa, etx, and cpe toxin genes by multiplex PCR. Results demonstrated that 6 out of 25 raw breast samples (24%), 8 out of 25 raw thigh samples (32%), 5 out of 25 nuggets samples (20%), 4 out of 25 panee samples (16%), and 4 out of 25 frankfurter samples (16%) were found to be contaminated with C. perfringens. Twenty-seven positive isolates obtained from these samples were identified as C. perfringens based on the microscopic examination and biochemical tests. It was detected that 8 (29.6%) out of 27 C. perfringens isolates carried only alpha toxin gene (type A), and only one isolate (3.7%) of them expressed both alpha and epsilon toxin genes (type D); while cpe gene never had been detected in any examined isolate, according to the multiplex PCR results.