Abstract
In the last decade, the incidence and severity of Clostridioides difficile infections (CDIs) in humans have been increasing and community-associated infections have been described. For these reasons, the interest in C. difficile in food and in food animals has increased, suggesting other possible sources of C. difficile acquisition. This study evaluated the presence of C. difficile on pig carcasses at the slaughterhouse and in pork products in Central Italy. The contamination rate on pig carcasses was 4/179 (2.3%). Regarding food samples, a total of 216 pork products were tested (74 raw meat preparations and 142 ready-to-eat food samples made by cured raw meat). The real-time PCR screening was positive for 1/74 raw meat preparation (1.35%) and for 1/142 ready-to-eat food samples (0.7%) C. difficile was isolated only from the raw meat preparation (pork sausage). All the isolated strains were toxigenic and susceptible to all the tested antibiotics. Strains isolated from carcass samples displayed A+B+CDTa+CDTb+ profile, were toxinotype IV and belonged to the same ribotype arbitrary named TV93, while the one isolated from food samples displayed A+B+CDTa-CDTb- profile and it was not possible to determine ribotype and toxinotype, because it was lost after freeze storage. It was concluded that the prevalence of C. difficile in the pork supply chain is very low.
Highlights
The present study determined the prevalence of C. difficile in pig carcasses and in pork products in Central Italy
C. difficile was recovered from four carcasses (4 out of 179—2.2%) and all the positive samples came from the same slaughterhouse (Umbria region)
The isolated strains belonged to a ribotype that did not match the reference strains available in the laboratory, nor with the human strains tested in previous studies conducted in the same area [35]
Summary
The incidence and severity of C. difficile infections (CDIs) in humans have been increasing due partly to the spread of hypervirulent strains [3]. Community-associated infections have been described and CDI is becoming a widespread cause of diarrhea in younger individuals and in populations lacking traditional risk factors, such as hospitalization and antibiotic treatment [4]. Recent data from North America and Europe suggest that 20%–27% of all CDI cases are community-acquired, with an incidence of 20–30 per 100,000 population [5,6,7]. The Italian rate of CDI, including the number of community-acquired outbreaks, is not definitively assessed because of the fragmented nature of the data available in the literature [8]
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