Staphylococcus aureus is an important aetiological agent of food intoxications in the European Union as it can cause gastro-enteritis through the production of various staphylococcal enterotoxins (SEs) in foods. Reported enterotoxin dose levels causing food-borne illness are scarce and varying. Three food poisoning outbreaks due to enterotoxin-producing S. aureus strains which occurred in 2013 ...

A variant enterotoxin gene, referred to as sezA+, has been identified. Staphylococcus aureus FRI1106, a staphylococcal enterotoxin type D producer (Sed+), contained HindIII fragments of 3.8 and 9.4 kilobase pairs (kbp) that hybridized in Southern blot analysis to a probe containing only staphylococcal enterotoxin type A structural gene sequences. Presumably, probe A-624 hybridized to the 9.4-kb...

The ability of 135 Staphylococcus strains isolated from Spanish dry-cured hams to produce enterotoxins in culture was investigated by the reversed passive latex agglutination method. A high percentage of enterotoxigenic Staphylococcus aureus strains (85.9%) was recorded, and 54.3% of these produced enterotoxin A. One of the two Staphylococcus epidermidis strains produced enterotoxin C. The reve...

We screened 569 children with acute onset diarrhoea from five Italian towns for heat stable enterotoxin produced by Escherichia coli. We compared an enzyme linked immunoabsorbent assay (ELISA) with the standard suckling mouse assay for detection of the enterotoxin. A total of 31 (5.4%) children were found who had strains of E coli that produced heat stable enterotoxin: 26 strains were positive ...

Acute lung injury (ALI) is characterized by pulmonary edema and acute inflammation leading to pulmonary dysfunction and potentially death. Early medical intervention may ameliorate the severity of ALI, but unfortunately, there are no reliable biomarkers for early diagnosis. We screened for biomarkers in a mouse model of ALI. In this model, inhalation of S. aureus enterotoxin A causes increased ...

Three enterotoxins from the Aeromonas hydrophila diarrheal isolate SSU have been molecularly characterized in our laboratory. One of these enterotoxins is cytotoxic in nature, whereas the other two are cytotonic enterotoxins, one of them heat labile and the other heat stable. Earlier, by developing an isogenic mutant, we demonstrated the role of a cytotoxic enterotoxin in causing systemic infec...

The potential of Staphylococcus aureus cheese isolates to grow and produce staphylococcal enterotoxin A under conditions typical for cheese making was investigated in three broth experiments. The effect of the concentration of undissociated lactic acid (HLac) in conjunction with specific pH values was studied by adjusting pH at a single concentration of lactic acid. First, the time-to-growth of...

Escherichia coli SA53 produces a new enterotoxin that has a biological activity similar to that of E. coli heat-labile enterotoxin (LT) but is not neutralized by antiserum against LT or cholera enterotoxin. Strain SA53 contained two plasmids, pRB1 (69.2 +/- 4.3 megadaltons) and pRB2 (57.6 +/- 5.3 megadaltons). Studies were undertaken to determine whether either plasmid was required for producti...

A partially purified preparation of the heat-stable enterotoxin of Escherichia coli caused a rapid and persistent increase in electric potential difference and short-circuit current when added in vitro to the luminal surface of isolated rabbit ileal mucosa. As little as 1 ng/ml produced an easily detectable response. Under short-circuit condition, the enterotoxin abolished net Cl- absorption; t...

Forty-seven strains representing 14 different Bacillus species isolated from clinical and food samples were grown in reconstituted infant milk formulae (IMF) and subsequently assessed for adherence to, invasion of, and cytotoxicity toward HEp-2 and Caco-2 cells. Cell-free supernatant fluids from 38 strains (81%) were shown to be cytotoxic, 43 strains (91%) adhered to the test cell lines, and 23...