Clostridium perfringens toxins (type A, B, C, D, E)

Outbreaks Where Food Workers Have Been Implicated in the Spread of Foodborne Disease. Part 4. Infective Doses and Pathogen Carriage

Peroral administration of purified enterotoxin to human volunteers provoked diarrhoea and abdominal pain, symptoms identical with those encountered in outbreaks of Clostridium perfringens food poisoning. Eight milligrams of enterotoxin caused diarrhoea in one of two volunteers. All of five subjects given 10 and 12 mg of purified enterotoxin or crude enterotoxin developed the classical symptoms of this food poisoning. Passive haemagglutination anti-enterotoxin titres in serum increased in only 5 of 9 volunteers after exposure to enterotoxin. As such levels of anti-enterotoxin can be detected in normal serum samples, titration of anti-enterotoxin may be of little use in diagnosing Cl. perfringens food poisoning. Enterotoxin was detected in all diarrhoeal faecal specimens, and the enterotoxin level varied from 0·2–16 μg/g. Detection of enterotoxin in diarrhoeal faeces may be the most reliable procedure in diagnosing outbreaks of Cl. perfringens food poisoning.

Experimental Diarrhoea in Human Volunteers Following Oral Administration of Clostridium perfringens Enterotoxin

NO less than a renaissance has emerged in studies of diarrhea, in spite of the unattractive attributes of feces, the difficulty in identifying pathogens among a sea of other bacteria, and the conse...

Pathogenesis of bacterial diarrheas. I.

Diarrhea and vomiting have been experimentally produced in monkeys after oral challenge with viable cells or culture filtrates of certain strains of Clostridium perfringens that previously had been shown to produce either fluid accumulation in the ligated ileum or overt diarrhea in the nonligated ileum of the rabbit, or both. Strains (or their culture filtrates) which did not produce a response in the rabbit likewise produced no symptoms in monkeys.

https://iai.asm.org/content/iai/3/1/171.full.pdf

Clostridium perfringens Type A Food Poisoning I. Response of the Rabbit Ileum as an Indication of Enteropathogenicity of Strains of Clostridium perfringens in Monkeys.

SUMMARY—Clostridium perfringens type A, S-79 behaves like a gas-gangrene producing strain in its production of heat-susceptible spores both in broth and in the intestinal tract of man. However, vegetative cells ingested by human volunteers produce the food-poisoning syndrome characterized by abdominal pain and diarrhea.

F. S. Thatcher

Papers

Experimental food poisoning with heat-susceptible Clostridium perfringens type A.