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. 2024 Mar 13;13(2):11667.
doi: 10.4081/ijfs.2024.11667. eCollection 2024 May 15.

Staphylococcal food poisoning outbreaks occurred in Sicily (Italy) from 2009 to 2016

Cinzia Cardamone  1 , Annamaria Castello  1 , Giuseppa Oliveri  1 , Antonella Costa  1 , Sonia Sciortino  1 , Yacine Nia  2 , Jacques Antoine Hennekinne  2 , Angelo Romano  3 , Fabio Zuccon  3 , Lucia Decastelli  3
Affiliations

Staphylococcal food poisoning outbreaks occurred in Sicily (Italy) from 2009 to 2016

Cinzia Cardamone et al. Ital J Food Saf. .

Abstract

Notification of foodborne outbreaks has been mandatory in Europe since 2005, and surveillance is carried out along the entire food chain. Here we report the results obtained from laboratory investigations about four cases of foodborne outbreaks that occurred in Sicily between 2009 and 2016, deemed to be related to staphylococcal enterotoxins (SEs) and coagulase-positive Staphylococci (CPS) by the Local Public Health Authority. Primosale cheese samples were processed by culture methods for enumeration of CPS and immunoenzymatic assays for detection and differentiation of the SEs possibly contained in food samples. In all cases, the mistrusted foods were found to be contaminated by CPS at bacterial loads between 5 and 8 log CFU/g and contained SE type C (SEC). The reported data confirm the risk of staphylococcal food poisoning associated with the consumption of raw milk cheese. SEC is the most commonly occurring SE in goat milk and dairy products and the most represented enterotoxin in Sicilian dairy products. Our results highlighted the need for improving the current monitoring efficiency and implementing the available laboratory methods to collect more faithful epidemiological data on the current prevalence of staphylococcal toxins in the food chain, including SEs currently not detectable by validated analytical methods.

Keywords: dairy products; food poisoning outbreaks; staphylococcal enterotoxins.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of interest: the authors declare no potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Map of outbreaks in Sicily.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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