botulism is a serious paralytic disease caused by clostridium botulinum toxin in foods. there are seven recognized serotypes of botulinum neurotoxins among which the principal prevalent types in humans include a, b and e. infant botulism results from intestinal colonization and toxin production by c. botulinum spores in babies less than 1 year old. honey is the most important food discriminated...

After Clostridium botulinum type G organisms and toxin were identified in necropsy specimens in cases of unexplained death in adults and infants (O. Sonnabend, W. Sonnabend, R. Heinzle, T. Sigrist, R Dirnhofer, and U. Krech, J. Infect. Dis. 143:22-27, 1981), extensive research to detect C. botulinum type G in soil samples from Switzerland was done. A total of 41 specimens from virgin soil and f...

The toxin of Clostridium butyricum strains isolated from two infants with botulism is neutralized by antitoxin for type E botulinum toxin. This toxin and that of a C. botulinum type E strain were purified by the same protocol. Both toxins were Mr 145,000 proteins which, when activated with trypsin, were composed of an H subunit of Mr 105,000 and an L subunit of Mr 50,000. The activated specific...

The ratios of ribonucleic acid to protein contents of Clostridium botulinum type C, D, and E cultures were lower than those of type A, B, and F cultures. Addition of ribonucleic acid at 0.4 mg/ml to culture satisfactorily aided acid precipitation of type C and D toxins, but not that of type E toxin.

Boticin B is a heat-stable bacteriocin produced by Clostridium botulinum strain 213B that has inhibitory activity against various strains of C. botulinum and related clostridia. The gene encoding the bacteriocin was localized to a 3.0-kb HindIII fragment of an 18. 8-kb plasmid, cloned, and sequenced. DNA sequencing revealed the boticin B structural gene, btcB, to be an open reading frame encodi...

In this study, the clinical findings and results of haematological and biochemical analyses of 26 cattle with botulism were evaluated. The most important clinical signs in the affected cattle included: decreased appetite, ataxia, difficulty to rise, loss of tongue tone, salivation and bradycardia. A definitive diagnosis of botulism was based on demonstration of the preformed toxin in ruminal an...

A rapid, quantitative PCR assay (TaqMan assay) which quantifies Clostridium botulinum type E by amplifying a 280-bp sequence from the botulinum neurotoxin type E (BoNT/E) gene is described. With this method, which uses the hydrolysis of an internal fluoregenic probe and monitors in real time the increase in the intensity of fluorescence during PCR by using the ABI Prism 7700 sequence detection ...

The anaerobic film pouch technique was used to quantitate and isolate clostridial spores in 2,358 samples of raw meat (1,078 of chicken, 624 of beef, 656 of pork). Of 19,727 putrefactive anaerobic (PA) sporeformers isolated, 1 was confirmed by mouse protection testing to be Clostridium botulinum type C. This isolate was obtained from a Western Canada chicken sample which contained 5.33 clostrid...