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Case Reports
. 2005 Jan;43(1):511-3.
doi: 10.1128/JCM.43.1.511-513.2005.

Infant botulism acquired from household dust presenting as sudden infant death syndrome

Mari Nevas  1 , Miia Lindström, Antti Virtanen, Sebastian Hielm, Markku Kuusi, Stephen S Arnon, Erkki Vuori, Hannu Korkeala
Affiliations
Case Reports

Infant botulism acquired from household dust presenting as sudden infant death syndrome

Mari Nevas et al. J Clin Microbiol. 2005 Jan.

Abstract

Clostridium botulinum type B was detected by multiplex PCR in the intestinal contents of a suddenly deceased 11-week-old infant and in vacuum cleaner dust from the patient's household. C. botulinum was also isolated from the deceased infant's intestinal contents and from the household dust. The genetic similarity of the two isolates was demonstrated by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis and randomly amplified polymorphic DNA analysis, thereby confirming that dust may act as a vehicle for infant botulism that results in sudden death.

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Figures

FIG. 1.
FIG. 1.
PFGE patterns of the C. botulinum strains isolated from the infant (lane 1) and from vacuum cleaner dust (lane 2). Digestion was performed with restriction enzymes SmaI and XhoI. The outermost lanes contain Low Range PFG marker.
FIG. 2.
FIG. 2.
RAPD patterns of the C. botulinum strains isolated from the infant (lane 1) and from vacuum cleaner dust (lane 2). The patterns were generated with universal primers OPJ-6 and OPJ-13. The outermost lanes contain molecular weight marker (MWM) VI.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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