Foodborne illnesses are of main concern throughout the world. Approximately 250 different foodborne diseases have been identified. Two-thirds of foodborne diseases are caused by bacteria. Most of the foodborne diseases are caused by gram negative bacteria, but gram positive bacteria like Staphylococcus aureus, Listeria monocytogenes, Bacillus species etc are also of great concern. Among gram positive bacteria, Staphylococcus aureus is a most important cause of gastroenteritis which occurs after consumption of contaminated food products.
Food is a tremendous medium by which pathogens can reach a suitable site in a new host. The most recurrent type of food poisoning in the world is caused by S. aureus. It produces enterotoxins which results in noteworthy loss of water in lumen after that vomiting and diarrhea occur. While Bacillus cereus causes two types of food poisoning i.e. emetic and diarrheal syndrome. B. cereus can contaminate various foods like meat, vegetable, milk and milk products and if contaminated food is ingested, diarrheal illness can be recognized by abdominal pain and watery diarrhea. Internationally more stress is given on microbiological quality of foodstuff which is used by human.
FDA’s (Food and Drug Administration) main concern is to protect the community from the microbial infectivity of food supply. FDA has listed some bacteria as foodborne pathogens which include Staphylococcus aureus, Clostridium perfringens, Clostridium botulinum, Bacillus cereus, Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella, Shigella, Escherichia coli, Campylobacter, Vibrio spp. and Yersinia spp. There were 1229 reported outbreaks of gastroenteritis in United States from 1998 to 2008 due to consumption of food contaminated with B. cereus, C. perfringens and S. aureus.
Therefore, to prevent the outbreaks it is very important to check the microbiological quality of food. The bacterial pathogens present in foods can be identified using conventional and standard methods such as culture and colony counting methods which may take up several days and hours to yield results. So to protect the community from the foodborne diseases it is necessary to detect the microbial pathogen in the food early. Therefore we need rapid, sensitive and specific methods like multiplex PCR for this purpose.
IQRA SAFDAR, DR ALI AHMED SHEIKH, AMNA KANWAL
UVAS, Lahore
