Clostridioides difficile in national food surveillance, Slovenia, 2015 to 2017

Abstract

Background: Clostridioides difficile is an important human and animal intestinal pathogen. Because of increasing indications of an association between C. difficile and food, in 2015, the Administration of the Republic of Slovenia for Food Safety, Veterinary Sector and Plant Protection (UVHVVR) included C. difficile in its national food surveillance. Aim: We aim to report the results and experience with a nationwide and longterm testing of food for C. difficile as a part of a regular national food surveillance programme. Methods: Retail minced meat and meat preparations (beef, pork and poultry) were sampled within a three-year period, 2015 to 2017. Selected raw retail vegetables, leaf salads and root vegetables, and ready-to-eat salads were only sampled during 2016 and 2017. Seafood was only sampled in 2017. Results: Altogether, 434 samples were tested, with 12 of 336 (3.6%) meat samples and 6 of 98 (6.1%) raw vegetables contaminated with C. difficile. Twelve of 18 recovered food isolates were toxigenic (toxinotypes 0, III, V, XII). The isolates belonged to 13 different PCR ribotypes, 001 being most common (5 isolates). Several food types with an increased potential of being contaminated with C. difficile were detected by surveillance. Conclusion: The three-year C. difficile testing within the national food surveillance revealed a low proportion of C. difficile-contaminated food and high genotype variability. Because the risk of C. difficile infection associated with C. difficile-contaminated food is unknown, no measures were recommended in the case of positive results.

Agricultural fertilization with poultry manure results in persistent environmental contamination with the pathogen Clostridioides difficile

“…difficile . CCs correlate well with PCR ribotypes (Frentrup et al ., 2020) (Table 4), and RTs 001, 014/020 and 005 have been reported from poultry faeces (Indra et al ., 2009; Hussain et al ., 2016; Abdel‐Glil et al ., 2018; Le Maréchal et al ., 2020) and from broiler meat (De Boer et al ., 2011; Tkalec et al ., 2020) in the past. In our manure samples, the most predominant strains were CC3 (RT001), CC71 (RT014/020) and CC88 (RT014).…”

Retail chicken meats as potential sources of Clostridioides difficile in Al-Jouf, Saudi Arabia

“…In the conducted study, low level of chicken meats contamination (4.40%) by C. difficile was detected. A recent Slovenian study reported nearly similar contamination level (5.00%) [29]. lower levels of chicken meats contamination were reported from Netherlands [48], Brazil [49] and USA [50] that are 2.70%, 0.00% and 0.00%, respectively.…”

“…Carrier rates in birds ranges from zero to 62.0% [5]. Several studies reported C. difficile contamination of retail meats of birds and considered it as a potential source of CDI in many populations all over the world [5,9,28,29].…”

Novel ribotype/sequence type associations and diverse CRISPR-Cas systems in environmental Clostridioides difficile strains from northern Iraq

“…Typically, this pathogen has been considered to be a problem in the western world, and thus, it has not been a priority in other places. However, new geographical areas such as Slovenia and Thailand are beginning to explore this pathogen from different environmental sources to understand the diversity that exists amongst the strains (Janezic et al 2016 , Putsathit et al 2017 , Imwattana et al 2020 , Tkalec et al 2020 ).…”