Abstract
A case of food-borne botulism occurred in Slovakia in 2015. Clostridium botulinum type A was isolated from three nearly empty commercial hummus tubes. The product, which was sold in Slovakia and the Czech Republic, was withdrawn from the market and a warning was issued immediately through the European Commission’s Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF). Further investigation revealed the presence of botulinum neurotoxin (BoNT) subtype BoNT/A3, a very rare subtype implicated in only one previous outbreak (Loch Maree in Scotland, 1922). It is the most divergent subtype of BoNT/A with 15.4% difference at the amino acid level compared with the prototype BoNT/A1. This makes it more prone to evading immunological and PCR-based detection. It is recommended that testing laboratories are advised that this subtype has been associated with food-borne botulism for the second time since the first outbreak almost 100 years ago, and to validate their immunological or PCR-based methods against this divergent subtype.
Highlights
The life-threatening illness botulism is caused by seven serotypes (A-G) of botulinum neurotoxins (BoNT), only serotypes A, B, E and F cause disease in humans
All of the BoNT-producing Clostridium species have non BoNT-producing counterparts which are often assigned to different species names, such as C. sporogenes for C. botulinum Group I strains [2]
Almost all colonies showed typical clostridia-like morphology and were probed for the presence of bont genes with a multiplex PCR for bont/A, bont/B, bont/E and bont/F [16] according to CEN ISO/TS 17919:2013
Summary
The life-threatening illness botulism is caused by seven serotypes (A-G) of botulinum neurotoxins (BoNT), only serotypes A, B, E and F cause disease in humans. There are three main forms of human botulism: food-borne, wound and infant botulism [1,2]. All of the BoNT-producing Clostridium species have non BoNT-producing counterparts (not harbouring the BoNT gene cluster) which are often assigned to different species names, such as C. sporogenes for C. botulinum Group I strains [2]. This polyphyly of C. botulinum together with its close relationship to non-toxigenic species can result either in the erroneous detection of toxigenic Clostridium species or failure thereof
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