171 - 174 Florence LCH.pmd

Toxinotype of Clostridium perfringens (CP) isolates collected from the Bernam River, Selangor River and Tengi Canal between April 2007 and January 2008 were determined by Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) using published primers. All the 147 isolates were toxinotype Type A, harbouring the alpha toxin gene. In addition, 5 of the isolates also had the enterotoxin (CPE) gene. Clostridium perfringens (CP), a gram positive, spore-forming anaerobe is a common gastrointestinal inhabitant that survives well in various environments. Its universal presence is attributed by the ability to withstand stressed conditions like low pH, solar radiation, and high atmospheric pressure. Studies also showed that CP does not replicate in natural settings such as unpolluted streams. These characteristics have promoted CP as an alternative faecal pollution indicator in recent years. It is particularly useful in assessing past pollution whereby other traditional faecal pollution indicators like Escherichia coli had died off. Besides serving as an emerging faecal pollution indicator, CP itself is a pathogen that produces an array of toxins which can cause acute life threatening clinical and veterinary diseases. Among the toxins, the alpha, beta, epsilon and iota toxin are used to categorize CP into five different toxinotype, type A to type E (Hatheway, 1990). Alpha, beta and epsilon toxins are the main causes of gas gangrene, necrotic enteritis and enterotoxemia respectively (Titball et al., 1999; Uzal & Kelly, 1998; Popoff, 2004). Another well characterized toxin of CP, the enterotoxin (CPE), causes food poisoning and antibiotic-associated diarrhea (McClane, 1996), and is usually found among Type A CP (Brynestad & Granum, 2002; Nakamura et al., 2004). In Malaysia, there is a lack of data on CP toxinotype from both clinical and environmental isolates. Hence, this study was carried out to determine CP toxinotype from river water samples, so as to provide some background information of the prevalence of CP toxinotypes in Malaysia. There is also a paucity of reports about environmental CP toxinotype from other countries (Johansson et al., 2006). Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) method was used to investigate CP toxinotype in this study instead of the tedious conventional latex agglutination or toxicity