Of 166 Bacteroides fragilis isolates, 26.2% of 103 isolates from blood and 20.6% of 63 extraintestinal isolates harbored the fragilysin gene (difference not statistically significant). Clinical characteristics and evolution were comparable in patients with B. fragilis bacteremia with or without this enterotoxin. Fragilysin seems not to be an important virulence factor in B. fragilis disease.

The prevalences of various genotypes of enterotoxin gene-carrying (cpe-positive) Clostridium perfringens type A in 24 different food poisoning outbreaks were 75% (chromosomal IS1470-cpe), 21% (plasmid-borne IS1470-like-cpe), and 4% (plasmid-borne IS1151-cpe). These results show that C. perfringens type A carrying the plasmid-borne cpe is a common cause of food poisoning.

The in vitro exposure of staphylococcal enterotoxin B to trypsin resulted in the formation within 30 min of a product (enterotoxin-T) unchanged in molecular weight, but with threonine as a second NH2 terminus. Upon reduction of the -SSbridge in enterotoxin-T, two fragments were separated by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis in sodium dodecyl sulfate. The peptide bond between Lys-97 and Thr-98 ...

Clostridium perfringens is a leading cause of bacterial food-borne illness in countries where consumption of meat and poultry is high. For example, each year in the United States, this organism is the second or third most common cause of confirmed cases of food-borne illness. Surveys of the incidence of this organism in retail foods were done in the 1960s without regard to whether isolates were...

The in vitro exposure of staphylococcal enterotoxin B to trypsin resulted in the formation within 30 min of a product (enterotoxin-T) unchanged in molecular weight, but with threonine as a second NH2 terminus. Upon reduction of the -SSbridge in enterotoxin-T, two fragments were separated by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis in sodium dodecyl sulfate. The peptide bond between Lys-97 and Thr-98 ...

Clostridium perfringens type E isolates produce iota-toxin, which is encoded by iap and ibp genes. Using Southern blot analyses, the current study identified iap/ibp plasmids of approximately 97 or approximately 135 kb among eight type E isolates. For most of these isolates, their iap/ibp plasmid also encoded urease and lambda-toxin. However, the beta2-toxin gene, if present, was on a different...

Culture supernatants of 30 enterotoxin-producing Bacillus cereus isolates produced a characteristic progressive destruction of McCoy cell monolayers. Enterotoxin-negative B. cereus and other group 1 Bacillus spp. caused no monolayer disruption. The McCoy cell tissue culture system appears to provide a rapid screening assay for detection of enterotoxin-producing B. cereus.

Staphylococcal enterotoxins have long been recognized as being responsible for staphylococcal food poisoning. Recently, attention has centered on their role as superantigens in exacerbating sepsis (4, 9, 12). Of the known enterotoxins, staphylococcal enterotoxin A (SEA) is one of the most commonly identified in clinical isolates (5, 9, 10). The human pathogen Staphylococcus aureus is the specie...