Introduction: Cronobacter spp. are considered to be an emerging opportunistic human pathogen and an etiological agent of life-threatening infections in infants. Symptoms include neonatal meningitis, sepsis and necrotizing enterocolitis, with a 40-80% mortality rate. Desiccated agriculture and marine products used as dry ingredients in PIF or baby food could be a dangerous source of Cronobacterinfection in infants. Moreover, desiccated foods also can cause illness in elderly or immunocompromised adults, because some agricultural and marine desiccated foods are routinely consumed without further heat process in Korea.
Purpose: One hundred fourteen desiccated ready-to-eat food samples, including agricultural and marine products, were investigated for the presence of Cronobacter from January 2011 to January 2012.
Methods: Antibiotic resistance was assessed with the disk diffusion method, and the molecular subtypes of Cronobacterisolates were identified using an automated rep-PCR (repetitive sequence-based PCR) system.
Results: Thirteen Cronobacter strains (11.4%) were finally isolated from 114 desiccated Ready-to-Eat products. The most common antibiotic resistance of Cronobacter observed was against cephalothin (69.2%) followed by ampicllin (7.6%), but was susceptible to chloramphenicol (100%), ciprofloxacin (100%), gentamicin (100%), nalidixic acid (100%), tetracycline (100%), streptomocycin (100%). Also Cronobacter strains isolated from different sources were generally differentiated by using the automated rep-PCR system, indicating that it could be used for the purpose of contamination source tracking of the foodborne pathogen bacteria including Cronobacterspp.
Significance: The prevalence of foodborne pathogenic bacteria in desiccated ready-to-eat foods, and also the profiles of their antibiotic resistance determined in this study could be useful for the risk assessment of the potential infection of Cronobacter.