The Food Safety Issues Associated With Vibrio Parahaemolyticus

♥ Vibrio parahaemolyticus is a foodborne pathogen and probably the leading cause of acute gastroenteritis worldwide.

The bacteria is an anaerobe that is described as Gram-negative, halophilic (salt loving), mesophilic and rod-shaped. It is non-spore forming.

The bacteria is widely distributed in marine and estuary environments and frequently isolated from a wide range of seafood (Liston 1990; Su and Liu 2007). The temperature range for growth is between 8ºC and 44ºC with an optimum between 35ºC and 37ºC. When conditions are right it can generate in times as short as 5 minutes.

The bacteria lives mainly in shellfish, finfish, water and muddy sediments.

Consumption of raw or under-cooked seafood that is contaminated with V. parahaemolyticus can often cause acute gastroenteritis.  The symptoms are often diarrhea (Bresee et al., 2002) with abdominal pain and sickness. In some cases it has caused death through wound infection and septicaemia although this is not common.

Globally, V. parahaemolyticus is identified as the leading cause of human gastroenteritis associated with consumption of seafood (Xu et al., 2014). The worst outbreaks are often caused by consuming raw oysters. Generally though most strains of V. parahaemolyticus are not pathogenic.

V. parahaemolyticus has been implicated in several seafood-borne infections in different regions of the world such as the United States (McLaughlin et al., 2005) with about 45,000 cases per year, Japan (Hara-Kudo et al., 2003; Kubota et al., 2008) where it is now the most common cause of food poisoning, India (Gopal et al.,2005; Chakraborty et al., 2008; Raghunath et al., 2008), Spain (Lozano-Léon et al., 2003), Italy (Paydar et al., 2013), and Brazil (Leal et al., 2008). Many cases of this type of food poisoning actually go unreported. It’s been recorded that there has been a 75% increase from 2006 through to 2012.

The serotype O4:K12 is treated as the most serious of the strains associated with illness (Abbott et al., 1989; Martinez-Urtaza et al., 2013). 

The appearance of Vibrio is rare in the UK but is associated with imported seafoods such as cooked prawns and dressed crab when imported from the Far East. Some isolates have been found in shellfish such as oysters found in the warmer waters of the South. 

The prevalence of V. parahaemolyticus in seafood samples from different parts of the world has been reported in the range of 8% to 51% (Abd-Elghany et al., 2013; Gjerde and Boe 1981; Robert-Pillot et al., 2004; Tilburg et al., 2000; Wang et al., 1996; Xu et al., 2014); fortunately, most isolates of this species are non-pathogenic to humans (Nishibuchi and Kaper, 1995). Pathogenic strains have been identified from Southern Italy using a mix of cultural, biochemical analysis and molecular assays (Di Pinto et al., 2008). 

The latest research from the University of New Hampshire has identified a new strain of V. parahaemolyticus called ST631. Its virulence is similar to the more common strain ST36.

Detection

Most detection methods exploit various forms of PCR (polymerase chain reaction) and DNA-DNA hybridization on a microarray (Tyagi et al., 2009; Wang et al., 2011).

Infection

The bacteria uses a number of adhesion factors to bind to the protein fibronectin and phosphatidic acid on the host cell. It then releases different effectors and toxins into the cytoplasm, causing cytotoxicity and disease (Gode-Patratz et al., 2011). The cause of the diarrhea is  caused by hemolysin production and other proteases which damage intestinal wall cells (Kawatsu et al., 2006; Nemoto et al., 2009).

Processing

The bacteria is killed by heating, so thorough cooking is a sure method of treating produce. Any outbreaks are due to contamination following cooking or multiplication during ambient or unrefrigerated storage.

Reviews

It is worth noting that this bacterium is related to other Vibrio species such as V. fulnicus and V. cholera. An excellent review is available on-line by Yeung and Boor (2004, and Su and Liu (2007) with plenty of details about the bacteria, its prevalence and microbiology. A more detailed genetic and morphological review is covered by Broberg et al., (2011) and later by Letchumanan et al., (2014).

The prevalence of gastroenteritis is rising because of global warming. Given that Vibrio species prefer brackish, warm temperatures for growth, the incidence of disease is not surprising (Martinez-Urtaza et al., 2010; Burge et al., 2014).

References

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