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Incidence of Enterotoxigenic Clostridium perfringens in Healthy Humans in relation to the Enhancement of Enterotoxin Production by Heat Treatment
Author(s) -
UEMURA TAKASHI
Publication year - 1978
Publication title -
journal of applied bacteriology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.889
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1365-2672
pISSN - 0021-8847
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2672.1978.tb00815.x
Subject(s) - enterotoxin , clostridium perfringens , microbiology and biotechnology , clostridiaceae , food poisoning , strain (injury) , incubation , food science , fermentation , biology , toxin , chemistry , bacteria , escherichia coli , biochemistry , genetics , anatomy , gene
Enterotoxin production was greatly enhanced in two of five food poisoning strains of Clostridium perfringens subjected to heat treatment prior to incubation in Duncan and Strong sporulation medium. Heating was carried out on three successive cultures of each strain, the optimum temperature for treatment being 85 °C for one strain and 95 °C for another: on each occasion cultures were heated for 20 min. The triple heat treatment procedure was used in testing strains of Cl. perfringens isolated from faeces of healthy human subjects for production of enterotoxin. Eleven of 35 (31%) individuals were found to be carriers of enterotoxigenic strains, the isolates producing more than 0·1 μ/ml of enterotoxin. Six of the 11 enterotoxigenic strains were killed by heating at 95 °C but one isolate produced more enterotoxin following treatment at this temperature than after heating at 75 °C.