Published criteria for implicating Clostridium perfringens as the cause of food-poisoning outbreaks include finding a median fecal C. perfringens spore count of greater than 10(6)/g among specimens from ill persons. We investigated a food-poisoning outbreak with the epidemiologic characteristics of C. perfringens-related disease in a nursing home in which the median fecal spore count for ill pa...

The study was designed to determine the types of Clostridium perfringens and their toxins in sheep with suspected enterotoxemia in AlAhsa province, KSA. Out of 240 intestinal content samples collected from dead sheep with suspected enterotoxemia, 34 Clostridial strains were isolated. Diagnosis was based on classical diagnostic tests, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and multiplex polym...

Context. Clostridium perfringens septicemia is often associated with translocation from the gastrointestinal or gastrourinary tract and occurs in patients who have malignancy or are immunocompromised. Clostridium perfringens septicemia is usually fatal without early identification, source control, and antibiotics. Case. We present a case of a 65-year-old female with Clostridium perfringens sept...

Small plasmids which replicate in both Escherichia coli and Clostridium perfringens were made by recombining E. coli plasmid pBR322 with three different small (less than 4 kilobases) plasmids native to C. perfringens. Subsequently, two homologous, though distinct, tetracycline resistance determinants (tet) from other C. perfringens plasmids were cloned into them. Both tet systems made E. coli r...

BACKGROUND There is poor understanding of most aspects of Clostridium perfringens type A as a possible cause of neonatal diarrhea in piglets, and the prevalence and types of C. perfringens present on Ontario swine farms is unknown. To study the prevalence of fecal C. perfringens and selected toxin genes, 48 Ontario swine farms were visited between August 2010 and May 2011, and 354 fecal samples...

The effectiveness as antimicrobials of lactic acid bacteria produced compounds reuterin and nisin was assessed against vegetative cells and spores of Clostridium perfringens isolates (from ovine milk obtained in farms with diarrheic lambs) and C. perfringens CECT 486 (type A toxin producer). We also tested the inhibitory effect of lysozyme and sodium nitrite on Clostridium. Minimal inhibitory c...

In both humans and animals, Clostridium perfringens is an important cause of histotoxic infections and diseases originating in the intestines, such as enteritis and enterotoxemia. The virulence of this Gram-positive, anaerobic bacterium is heavily dependent upon its prolific toxin-producing ability. Many of the ∼16 toxins produced by C. perfringens are encoded by large plasmids that range in si...

BACKGROUND Although useful for probing bacterial pathogenesis and physiology, current random mutagenesis systems suffer limitations for studying the toxin-producing bacterium Clostridium perfringens. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS An EZ-Tn5-based random mutagenesis approach was developed for use in C. perfringens. This mutagenesis system identified a new regulatory locus controlling toxin pro...

The review presents modern data on the genetics and etiopathogenetic features of Clostridium perfringens toxins, including role enterotoxin, in development food poisoning a number intestinal diseases humans, animals birds.

Clostridium perfringens is one of the five major food borne pathogens in the western world (expressed in cases per year). Symptoms are caused by an enterotoxin, for which 6% of type A strains carry the structural gene. This enterotoxin is released when ingested cells sporulate in the small intestine. Research on C. perfringens has been limited to a couple of strains that sporulate well in Dunca...