Laboratory of Food Microbiology and Food Preservation, Department of Food Technology, Safety and Health, Faculty of Bioscience Engineering, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
Laboratorio Analises, Instituto Superior Tecnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal.
Compr Rev Food Sci Food Saf. 2020 Jul;19(4):1605-1657. doi: 10.1111/1541-4337.12571. Epub 2020 Jun 11.
Bacterial toxins are food safety hazards causing about 10% of all reported foodborne outbreaks in Europe. Pertinent to Gram-positive pathogens, the most relevant toxins are emetic toxin and diarrheal enterotoxins of Bacillus cereus, neurotoxins of Clostridium botulinum, enterotoxin of Clostridium perfringens, and a family of enterotoxins produced by Staphylococcus aureus and some other staphylococci. These toxins are the most important virulence factors of respective foodborne pathogens and a primary cause of the related foodborne diseases. They are proteins or peptides that differ from each other in their size, structure, toxicity, toxicological end points, solubility, and stability, types of food matrix to which they are mostly related to. These differences influence the characteristics of required detection methods. Therefore, detection of these toxins in food samples, or detection of toxin production capacity in the bacterial isolate, remains one of the cornerstones of microbial food analysis and an essential tool in understanding the relevant properties of these toxins. Advanced research has led into new insights of the incidence of toxins, mechanisms of their production, their physicochemical properties, and their toxicological mode of action and dose-response profile. This review focuses on biological, immunological, mass spectrometry, and molecular assays as the most commonly used detection and quantification methods for toxins of B. cereus, C. botulinum, C. perfringens, and S. aureus. Gathered and analyzed information provides a comprehensive blueprint of the existing knowledge on the principles of these assays, their application in food safety, limits of detection and quantification, matrices in which they are applicable, and type of information they provide to the user.
细菌毒素是食品安全危害物，在欧洲所有报告的食源性疾病爆发中约占 10%。与革兰氏阳性病原体相关的主要毒素有蜡样芽胞杆菌的呕吐毒素和腹泻肠毒素、肉毒梭菌的神经毒素、产气荚膜梭菌的肠毒素以及金黄色葡萄球菌和其他一些葡萄球菌产生的一组肠毒素。这些毒素是各自食源性病原体的最重要毒力因子，也是相关食源性疾病的主要原因。它们是蛋白质或肽，在大小、结构、毒性、毒性终点、溶解性和稳定性以及与它们最相关的食物基质类型方面彼此不同。这些差异影响所需检测方法的特点。因此，在食品样品中检测这些毒素，或在细菌分离物中检测毒素产生能力，仍然是微生物食品分析的基石之一，也是了解这些毒素相关特性的重要工具。深入的研究带来了对毒素发生、产生机制、理化性质以及毒理学作用模式和剂量反应特征的新认识。本综述重点介绍了生物、免疫、质谱和分子测定法，这些方法是检测和定量蜡样芽胞杆菌、肉毒梭菌、产气荚膜梭菌和金黄色葡萄球菌毒素最常用的方法。收集和分析的信息为这些检测方法的原理、在食品安全中的应用、检测限和定量限、适用的基质以及它们向用户提供的信息类型提供了全面的蓝图。
