Clostridium perfringens: spores & cells, media & modeling

Clostridium perfringensis one of the five major food borne pathogens in the western world (expressed as cases per year). Symptoms of C. perfringens food poisoning are caused by an enterotoxin, which is released when ingested cells sporulate in the intestines. To increase knowledge on this bacterium, it was tried to optimize sporulation of a variety of strains, but only strain dependent effects were noted. Since many media are available to isolate C. perfringens from foods, a selection of these media was compared and it was shown that these media performed equally well. Cooling and storage of food are often the cause of gastro enteritis. Therefore, the behavior of this microorganism was studied at low temperatures and a model was designed to predict the effect of various cooling procedures applied to food on growth of C. perfringens . The model can be used to set up Good Manufacturing Procedures (GMP).