Attribution of Listeria monocytogenes human infections to food and animal sources in Northern Italy

Abstract

Listeriosis is a foodborne illness characterized by a relatively low morbidity, but a large disease burden due to the severity of clinical manifestations and the high case fatality rate. Increased listeriosis notifications have been observed in Europe since the 2000s. However, the reasons for this increase are largely unknown, with the sources of sporadic human listerioris often remaining elusive. Here we inferred the relative contributions of several putative sources of Listeria monocytogenes strains from listerioris patients in Northern Italy (Piedmont and Lombardy regions), using two established source attribution models (i.e. 'Dutch' and 'STRUCTURE') in comparative fashion. We compared the Multi-Locus Sequence Typing and Multi-Virulence-Locus Sequence Typing profiles of strains collected from beef, dairy, fish, game, mixed foods, mixed meat, pork, and poultry. Overall, 634 L. monocytogenes isolates were collected from 2005 to 2016. In total, 40 clonal complexes and 51 virulence types were identified, with 36% of the isolates belonging to possible epidemic clones (i.e. genetically related strains from unrelated outbreaks). Source attribution analysis showed that 50% of human listerioris cases (95% Confidence Interval 44-55%) could be attributed to dairy products, followed by poultry and pork (15% each), and mixed foods (15%). Since the contamination of dairy, poultry and pork products are closely linked to primary production, expanding actions currently limited to ready-to-eat products to the reservoir level may help reducing the risk of cross-contamination at the consumer level.

Keywords: Epidemic clones; Food safety; Listeria monocytogenes; Listeriosis; Molecular epidemiology; Source attribution.