https://doi.org/10.4081/ijfs.2024.11667
Staphylococcal food poisoning outbreaks occurred in Sicily (Italy) from 2009 to 2016
Submitted: 17 August 2023
Accepted: 11 December 2023
Published: 13 March 2024
Accepted: 11 December 2023
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All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
Authors
Notification of foodborne outbreaks has been mandatory in Europe since 2005, and surveillance is carried out along the entire food chain. Here we report the results obtained from laboratory investigations about four cases of foodborne outbreaks that occurred in Sicily between 2009 and 2016, deemed to be related to staphylococcal enterotoxins (SEs) and coagulase-positive Staphylococci (CPS) by the Local Public Health Authority. Primosale cheese samples were processed by culture methods for enumeration of CPS and immunoenzymatic assays for detection and differentiation of the SEs possibly contained in food samples. In all cases, the mistrusted foods were found to be contaminated by CPS at bacterial loads between 5 and 8 log CFU/g and contained SE type C (SEC). The reported data confirm the risk of staphylococcal food poisoning associated with the consumption of raw milk cheese. SEC is the most commonly occurring SE in goat milk and dairy products and the most represented enterotoxin in Sicilian dairy products. Our results highlighted the need for improving the current monitoring efficiency and implementing the available laboratory methods to collect more faithful epidemiological data on the current prevalence of staphylococcal toxins in the food chain, including SEs currently not detectable by validated analytical methods.
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Cardamone C, Castello A, Oliveri G, Costa A, Sciortino S, Nia Y, Hennekinne JA, Romano A, Zuccon F, Decastelli L. Staphylococcal food poisoning outbreaks occurred in Sicily (Italy) from 2009 to 2016. Ital J Food Safety [Internet]. 2024 Mar. 13 [cited 2024 Nov. 21];13(2). Available from: https://www.pagepressjournals.org/ijfs/article/view/11667
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