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Case report of Salmonella cross-contamination in a food laboratory

BACKGROUND: This paper describes a case of Salmonella cross-contamination in a food laboratory. In 2012, chocolate bars shipped from Belgium to the USA were prevented from entering the USA because a Salmonella Rissen strain had been isolated from one of the chocolate bars in a Belgian food laborator...

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Autores principales: Rasschaert, Geertrui, De Reu, K., Heyndrickx, M., Herman, L.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4787000/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26965050
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13104-016-1969-7
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author Rasschaert, Geertrui
De Reu, K.
Heyndrickx, M.
Herman, L.
author_facet Rasschaert, Geertrui
De Reu, K.
Heyndrickx, M.
Herman, L.
author_sort Rasschaert, Geertrui
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: This paper describes a case of Salmonella cross-contamination in a food laboratory. In 2012, chocolate bars shipped from Belgium to the USA were prevented from entering the USA because a Salmonella Rissen strain had been isolated from one of the chocolate bars in a Belgian food laboratory. However, a retrospective study of the Salmonella isolates sent from the laboratory to the Belgian National Reference Laboratory for Salmonella revealed that 7 weeks prior, a Salmonella Rissen strain has been isolated from fish meal in the same food laboratory. The chocolate bars were not expected to be contaminated with Salmonella because the ingredients all tested negative during the production process. Furthermore, because Salmonella Rissen is only rarely isolated from food, it was hypothesized that the two Salmonella Rissen isolates belonged to the same strain and that the second isolation event in this laboratory was caused by cross-contamination. To confirm this hypothesis, both Salmonella Rissen isolates were fingerprinted using different molecular techniques. To evaluate the discriminatory power of the techniques used, 11 other Salmonella Rissen isolates from different origins were included in the comparison. Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, repetitive element palindromic PCR and three random amplified polymorphic DNA PCR assays were used. RESULTS: Repetitive element palindromic PCR and random amplified polymorphic DNA PCR assays were insufficiently discriminatory, whereas pulsed-field gel electrophoresis using the combination of two restriction enzymes showed sufficient discrimination to confirm the hypothesis. CONCLUSIONS: Although cross-contamination in food laboratories are rarely reported, cross-contamination can always occur. Laboratories should therefore always be aware of the possibility of cross-contamination, especially when enrichment is used in the microbiological analysis. Furthermore, it is advised that results showing isolates of the same serotype isolated in a short time frame from unrelated food products should be interpreted carefully and should be confirmed with additional strain typing.
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spelling pubmed-47870002016-03-12 Case report of Salmonella cross-contamination in a food laboratory Rasschaert, Geertrui De Reu, K. Heyndrickx, M. Herman, L. BMC Res Notes Research Article BACKGROUND: This paper describes a case of Salmonella cross-contamination in a food laboratory. In 2012, chocolate bars shipped from Belgium to the USA were prevented from entering the USA because a Salmonella Rissen strain had been isolated from one of the chocolate bars in a Belgian food laboratory. However, a retrospective study of the Salmonella isolates sent from the laboratory to the Belgian National Reference Laboratory for Salmonella revealed that 7 weeks prior, a Salmonella Rissen strain has been isolated from fish meal in the same food laboratory. The chocolate bars were not expected to be contaminated with Salmonella because the ingredients all tested negative during the production process. Furthermore, because Salmonella Rissen is only rarely isolated from food, it was hypothesized that the two Salmonella Rissen isolates belonged to the same strain and that the second isolation event in this laboratory was caused by cross-contamination. To confirm this hypothesis, both Salmonella Rissen isolates were fingerprinted using different molecular techniques. To evaluate the discriminatory power of the techniques used, 11 other Salmonella Rissen isolates from different origins were included in the comparison. Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, repetitive element palindromic PCR and three random amplified polymorphic DNA PCR assays were used. RESULTS: Repetitive element palindromic PCR and random amplified polymorphic DNA PCR assays were insufficiently discriminatory, whereas pulsed-field gel electrophoresis using the combination of two restriction enzymes showed sufficient discrimination to confirm the hypothesis. CONCLUSIONS: Although cross-contamination in food laboratories are rarely reported, cross-contamination can always occur. Laboratories should therefore always be aware of the possibility of cross-contamination, especially when enrichment is used in the microbiological analysis. Furthermore, it is advised that results showing isolates of the same serotype isolated in a short time frame from unrelated food products should be interpreted carefully and should be confirmed with additional strain typing. BioMed Central 2016-03-10 /pmc/articles/PMC4787000/ /pubmed/26965050 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13104-016-1969-7 Text en © Rasschaert et al. 2016 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Rasschaert, Geertrui
De Reu, K.
Heyndrickx, M.
Herman, L.
Case report of Salmonella cross-contamination in a food laboratory
title Case report of Salmonella cross-contamination in a food laboratory
title_full Case report of Salmonella cross-contamination in a food laboratory
title_fullStr Case report of Salmonella cross-contamination in a food laboratory
title_full_unstemmed Case report of Salmonella cross-contamination in a food laboratory
title_short Case report of Salmonella cross-contamination in a food laboratory
title_sort case report of salmonella cross-contamination in a food laboratory
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4787000/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26965050
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13104-016-1969-7
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