Food Safety

Rapid Detection and Effective Prevention of Foodborne Hazards

Lan Hu, Lan Hu

• Publisher: Apple Academic Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351612012
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Toxicology

This new volume, Food Safety: Rapid Detection and Effective Prevention of Foodborne Hazards, focuses on the general concepts, mechanisms, and new applications of analytical and molecular biology techniques for detecting, removing, and preventing chemical and biological hazards from food. Edited by a microbiologist and medical officer with over 20 years of laboratory and research experience in bacteriology, molecular biology, infectious disease, and food safety, and who has trained with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the volume provides an abundance of valuable information on food safety and foodborne hazards in our food and drink.

Today, food safety is a growing concern not only of food-related professionals and policymakers, but also of the public. Foodborne hazards, including chemical and biological hazards, can cause food intoxication, infectious diseases, cancers, and other health risks. Foodborne diseases are a major public health and economic burden in both the developed and developing countries. In the United States alone, the incidence of foodborne illness is approximately 9.4 million cases with about 56, 000 hospitalizations and 1, 351 deaths every year.

• Written in an easy-to-read and user-friend style, each chapter introduces a chemical or biological hazard and addresses:
• What kinds of disease does the foodborne hazard cause
• Why is it necessary for us to study it
• What routes does it take to enter our food and how does it cause us to become sick
• How do we identify it
• Chapters then go on to present new technologies employed to detect, isolate, and/or identify the hazard and prevention procedures such as: (ADD BULLETS)
• How can the current application of new technology be used to detect the foodborne hazards
• How do we prevent the diseases caused by the foodborne hazards

This book will be valuable to professionals and other specialists who work in food preparation, food safety, clinical laboratories, and food manufacturing industry. It will be a resource for food handling trainers as well as to anyone interested in foodborne hazards and their affective detection, reduction, and prevention strategies. This book can also serve as a important reference for more specialized courses in food safety-related courses and training programs.

PART I

Biological Toxins

CHAPTER 1

STAPHYLOCOCCAL ENTEROTOXINS: FOOD POISONING AND DETECTION METHODS

XIN WANG¹ and YINDUO JI^*2

¹College of Food Science and Engineering, Northwest A&F University, Yangling 712100, Shaanxi, PR China

²Department of Veterinary Biomedical Sciences, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Minnesota, St. Paul 55108, MN, USA

^*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]

CONTENTS

Abstract

1.1 Introduction

1.2 Staphylococcal Food Poisoning (SFP)

1.3 Staphylococcal Enterotoxins and Their Characteristics

1.4 Animal Models and Cell-Based Approaches for Examination of Staphylococcal Enterotoxins

1.5 Molecular Methods

1.6 Immunological Methods

1.7 Mass Spectrometry-Based Methods

1.8 Conclusions

Keywords

References

ABSTRACT

Staphylococcus aureus can cause a variety of diseases including skin and soft tissue infections, and systematic and life-threatening infections. Meanwhile, S. aureus is one of the major foodborne pathogens causing food poisoning both in humans and animals. The pathogenesis of S. aureus causing food poisoning is attributable to the production of many staphylococcal enterotoxins (SEs), SEs-like, exfoliative toxin A and B and/or toxic shock syndrome toxin-1 by some S. aureus isolates. Therefore, the development of rapid, specific, sensitive, and reliable diagnostic approaches is not only important for detecting and distinguishing staphylococcal exterotoxins, but also can provide powerful tool for food safety control in the public health and in food industry. In this chapter, we discuss the staphylococcal food poisoning, predominant genotypes of S. aureus isolates, SEs and their characteristics, animal models, and various cell-based strategies to evaluate SEs. Moreover, we review molecular-based methods, immunological approaches, as well as advanced mass spectrometry technologies that have been utilized in the determination and detection of SEs for food safety.

1.1 INTRODUCTION

Staphylococcus aureus is a major pathogen that causes a variety of diseases including skin and soft tissue infections, and systematic and life-threatening infections, such as pneumonia, endocarditis, and toxic shock syndrome. This organism has caused tens of millions of infections annually in the United States. The continuing emergence of multiple drug resistant S. aureus isolates, especially methicillin resistant S. aureus (MRSA), has led to a serious public concern. MRSA accounts for 40–60% of the hospital-acquired infections in the United States and has increasingly spread beyond healthcare facilities, emerging as a community-acquired pathogen that results in minor skin and soft tissue infections as well as severe invasive diseases, such as necrotizing pneumonia and a sepsis syndrome. The pathogenicity of S. aureus partially relies on the coordinately regulated expression of virulence factors that allows the bacterium to evade the host immune system and/or promote survival during infection. Similar to other bacterial pathogens, S. aureus has evolved a series of regulatory effectors that allow the organisms to sense and adapt to varying environmental stimuli and survive within a particular niche by modulating specific cellular responses and virulence gene expression.

Meanwhile, S. aureus is one of the major foodborne pathogens causing food poisoning both in humans and animals.¹ It has been well established that the pathogenesis of S. aureus causing food poisoning is because some S. aureus isolates produce many staphylococcal enterotoxins (SEs), staphylococcal enterotoxin-like (SEls), exfoliative toxin A and B (eta and etb)and toxic shock syndrome toxin-1 (TSST-1). SEs or SEls are well known as a major cause of food poisoning.² At least 23 different types of SEs have been identified up to today, including the classical SEs (SEA through SEE), and the new types of SEs (SEG to SEX).²

S. aureus often colonizes on the skin and mucous membranes of humans as commensal inhabitants. Thus, the food workers carrying enterotoxin-producing S. aureus in their noses and/or hands are the major resource of food contamination due to poor hygiene during the food preparation and process.² SEs are also a threat to both food safety and food security if they are produced in a purified form that can be used as a deliberate adulterant. Therefore, it is necessary to develop reliable, sensitive, and rapid methods for the detection of SEs. A large number of sensitive and selective detection methods based on different principles have been reported. This review provides a brief overview of conventional methods and focuses on immunosensors, which are currently used to detect SEs in food. Finally, future trends and conclusions are discussed.

1.2 STAPHYLOCOCCAL FOOD POISONING (SFP)

SFP is caused by the ingestion of SEs produced during massive growth of S. aureus in food. The severity of SFP mainly depends on individual’s sensitivity to the toxins, the amount of contaminated food eaten, the amount of toxin in the food ingested, and the general health conditions. The incubation period of illness ranges from 30 min to 8 h, but usually 2–4 h.³ SFP induces a rapid onset of symptoms including nausea, vomiting, retching, abdominal cramping, and prostration, which are often accompanied by diarrhea and sometimes fever. In severe cases, patients may have headache, muscle cramping, severe fluid, and electrolytes loss with weakness and low blood pressure or shock. SFP is usually self-limiting within two days, but occasionally becomes severe enough to warrant hospitalization for a longer period of time.⁴

S. aureus frequently colonizes on the skin and mucous membranes of humans with approximately 25–30% for persistent colonization.^4,5 Thus, food handlers carrying enterotoxin-producing S. aureus in their nasal cavity or on their skin are a recognized risk factor for food contamina...