Author(s):

Shruti Mishra, Prashant Ankur Jain and Raghvendra Raman Mishra

Abstract: Food-borne diseases due to microbial pathogens, have become a major issue of concern as they represent serious threat to the health of millions of people world - wide. Serious outbreaks of food borne disease have been documented on every continent in the past decades, illustrating both the public health and social significance of these diseases. Food Contamination is of major health hazards in India leading to food poisoning. The food borne diseases due to food contamination or spoilage is one of the important problems to be addressed. Staphylococcus aureus has been found to be one of the major cause of food poisoning among all the other food pathogens. S. aureus produces very important virulence factors including Staphylococcus enterotoxins (SEs) which are the main causes of diarrhoea, vomiting and other symptoms associated with food poisoning. Therefore to minimize infection in food and water, the etiological agents and harmful toxins produced by them must be identified. Early identification will be helpful in minimizing food borne infections which helps in the prevention of diarrheal diseases. The conventional methods used for identification of S. aureus are limited to their Biological characterization only that are not only time consuming rather have limited reliability. Currently the molecular techniques based on PCR amplification of 16S rRNA of S. aureus for rapid and specific detection is widely used approach. This study focuses on rapid detection of S. aureus strains obtained from various food samples by development of a specific PCR Assay including a novel primer set and standardized PCR Conditions. A multiplex PCR assay has also been developed for specific Staphylococcal enterotoxins genes (SEA, SEB, SEC, SED, and SEE) produced by different isolates. Out of the 59 isolates of Staphylococcus aureus obtained from various food samples, found positive for enterotoxin infection, 15, 21, 6, 12 and 5 were found to be producing SEA, SEB, SEC, SED and SEE respectively further employing that these strains were capable of producing only one type of enterotoxin. The developed multiplex polymerase chain reaction assays will be useful for rapid detection of S. aureus and respective enterotoxins being produced from foods, clinical samples and environmental surveys. This may lead to early diagnosis of infection and help in timely prophylaxis.

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