An outbreak of Salmonella food poisoning at a snapping turtle restaurant.

*Corresponding author: Mailing address: Kawagoe City Public Health Center, 817-1, Ogaya, Kawagoe-shi, Saitama 350-1104, Japan. E-mail: [email protected] We report here an outbreak of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium infection at a snapping turtle (Suppon) restaurant in Japan. On September 27, 2007, a public health center received a report that a 4-year-old boy had been suffering from diarrhea and fever since the night of September 23. The public health center’s investigation revealed that this boy had eaten a meal together with 7 other people (Group A) at a snapping turtle restaurant on September 22. On that day, 14 people visited the restaurant. Among them, 8 people including the 4-yearold-boy developed symptoms: 7 people from Group A and one in another group (Group B) (Table 1). The symptoms included diarrhea, abdominal pain, vomiting, and fever. The incubation period was calculated to be 12-60 h. S. Typhimurium was isolated from a total of 4 people: 3 from Group A and one from Group B. None of the other customers (Groups C and D) developed symptoms. A total of 17 samples were examined: one meat and one blood sample from a snapping turtle the restaurant was preparing to serve, 12 swab specimens from cooking utensils, and 3 stool specimens from employees of the restaurant. S. Typhimurium strains were isolated from the meat and blood samples and from 2 swab specimens from a carapace and a vessel of the snapping turtle. The bacteria levels in the meat were above 5,500/100 g as determined by the MPN method, and 800 cfu/g by inoculation on the appropriate plate. The isolates were subjected to pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) analysis. The PFGE patterns after digestion with BlnI were the same for all the isolates (Fig. 1). The isolates were sensitive to all the antibiotics tested: chloramphenicol, streptomycin, tetracycline, kanamycin, ampicillin, nalidixic acid, cefotaxime, ciprofloxacin, gentamicin, fosfomycin, norfloxacin and sulfamethoxazole/ trimethoprim. These epidemiological and bacteriological data indicated that the outbreak was caused by the S. Typhimurium strain that contaminated snapping turtles served at the restaurant. Fig. 1. PFGE patterns of S. Typhimurium isolates after digestion with BlnI. Lanes 1-4, isolates from symptomatic patients; lane 5, an isolate from a blood sample from the snapping turtle; lane 6, an isolate from a meat sample from the snapping turtle; lane 7, a swab specimen from the carapace; lane 8, a swab specimen from the vessel for the snapping turtle; lane 9, an isolate in other case; M, Salmonella Braenderup after H9812/XbaI digestion.