Bureau of Microbial Hazards, Health Canada, Ottawa, ON, Canada.
Environmental Health Science and Research Bureau, Health Canada, Ottawa, ON, Canada.
Epidemiol Infect. 2023 Sep 7;151:e154. doi: 10.1017/S0950268823001474.
causes infant botulism by colonising the intestines and producing botulinum neurotoxin Previous reports have linked infant botulism cases to spores in household dust, yet the baseline incidence of spores in residential households is currently unknown. Vacuum cleaner dust from 963 households in 13 major Canadian cities was tested for using a novel real-time PCR assay directed against all known subtypes of the botulinum neurotoxin gene. None of the samples tested positive for Analysis of a random subset of samples by MALDI Biotyper revealed that the most common anaerobic bacterial isolates were of the genus and the most common species recovered overall was Dust that was spiked with spores of each toxin type successfully produced positive real-time PCR reactions. These control experiments indicate that this is a viable method for the detection of spores in household dust. We make several recommendations for future work that may help discover a common environmental source of spores that could lead to effective preventative measures for this rare but deadly childhood disease.
导致婴儿肉毒中毒的原因是其在肠道中定植并产生肉毒神经毒素。 以前的报告将婴儿肉毒中毒病例与家庭灰尘中的孢子联系起来，但目前尚不清楚住宅家庭中孢子的基线发生率。 使用针对所有已知肉毒神经毒素基因亚型的新型实时 PCR 检测方法，对来自加拿大 13 个主要城市的 963 户家庭的真空吸尘器灰尘进行了检测。 没有一个样本对 呈阳性。 通过 MALDI Biotyper 对随机样本子集进行分析表明，最常见的厌氧细菌分离物属于 属，总体上恢复的最常见物种是 向灰尘中添加每种毒素类型的 孢子都成功地产生了阳性实时 PCR 反应。 这些对照实验表明，这是一种可行的方法，可用于检测家庭灰尘中的 孢子。 我们提出了一些未来工作的建议，这可能有助于发现导致这种罕见但致命的儿童疾病的常见环境孢子来源。
