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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Food Microbiology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2025.1567360
This article is part of the Research Topic Food Safety in the Context of One Health: Current Trends, Challenges and Perspectives View all articles
Tracing and characterization of foodborne botulism caused by new MLST type Clostridium botulinum A2 in Hebei province, China.
Provisionally accepted
Ziwei Lu 1
Jinzhi Feng 2 Xia Luo 1 Hui Sun 1 Ying Huang 1 Shuangshuang Lu 1
Dai Wang 2
Xuefang Xu 1*
Lu Xuancheng 1* Lixia Xu 3*- 1 Chinese Center For Disease Control and Prevention, Beijing, China
- 2 Xiamen University, Xiamen, Fujian Province, China
- 3 Quzhou Maternity and Child Health Care Hospital, Quzhou, Zhejiang, China
Foodborne botulism caused by botulinum neurotoxin (BoNT) remains an important form of botulism in worldwide, with a high mortality rate and long hospitalization time. Clostridium botulinum (C. botulinum) is the main microorganism producing BoNTs. This study reports a case of foodborne botulism caused by C. botulinum subtype A2 strain from pickled eggs. We detected the BoNT gene by real time PCR and BoNT by mouse bioassay from both the patient's feces and pickled eggs and isolated C. botulinum A strains. The genetic SNP and phylogenetic tree analysis confirmed C. botulinum strains from the patient's feces and pickled eggs is the same origin. Although the Hebei province is a high-incidence area for foodborne botulism, this is the first report of botulism caused by C. botulinum type A in pickled eggs in this region. The isolated 10 C. botulinum A strains all had a new ST193 type, and contained BoNT A toxin-producing gene and a potential virulence factor GroEL virulence factor. BoNT A gene was classified as subtype A2 and orfx cluster. Antibiotic resistance genes included cfr, spw, and vat. We also found that the genomic size of the C. botulinum in the feces was smaller than that in the food and most of the missing genes are around desiccation/radiation resistance protein might indicating gene lost in the process, of entering the intestine. and whether there was genome reduction needs more data support. For this foodborne botulism outbreak, more work should be placed on the promotion of food safety awareness among residents to prevent such botulism outbreaks in the future.
Keywords: C. botulinum, Foodborne botulism, BoNT, subtype A2, Genome Reduction
Received: 27 Jan 2025; Accepted: 10 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Lu, Feng, Luo, Sun, Huang, Lu, Wang, Xu, Xuancheng and Xu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Xuefang Xu, Chinese Center For Disease Control and Prevention, Beijing, China
Lu Xuancheng, Chinese Center For Disease Control and Prevention, Beijing, China
Lixia Xu, Quzhou Maternity and Child Health Care Hospital, Quzhou, Zhejiang, China
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