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Category: Applied and Industrial Microbiology
Pathogenicity of Enterobacter sakazakii, Page 1 of 2
< Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/10.1128/9781555815608/9781555814601_Chap05-1.gif /docserver/preview/fulltext/10.1128/9781555815608/9781555814601_Chap05-2.gifAbstract:
Enterobacter sakazakii is an emerging food-borne pathogen that has increasingly raised interest among the scientific community, health care providers, and the food industry since the early 1980s, when it was accepted as a new species. This chapter attempts to summarize research endeavors aimed at understanding the pathogenesis of this important food-borne pathogen. The first two known cases of E. sakazakii meningitis date from 1958 and were first reported in 1961. Subsequently, cases of meningitis, septicemia, and necrotizing enterocolitis due to this organism have been reported worldwide. E. sakazakii adherence to the cell lines increased with a higher multiplicity of infection and was maximal at the late bacterial exponential growth phase. Once E. sakazakii makes its way past the gastrointestinal tract to the bloodstream, it is likely that it attaches to endothelial cells and then somehow crosses through the blood-brain barrier to infect the meninges and brain. Interestingly, using meningitis and bacteremia alone to characterize the disease, invasive infant cases were divided into two groups based on gestational age and birth weight. The interest in the causal relationship between powdered infant formula (PIF) and this emerging food-borne pathogen has led to an interest in ascertaining its mechanism(s) of pathogenicity.
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Schematic diagram illustrating young (a) and neonatal (b) experimental designs for assessing the virulence and pathogenicity of E. sakazakii.
Proposed model for the pathogenesis of E. sakazakii, based on our own work and that of the literature.
Recovery of E. sakazakii from the organs of young gerbils on days 7 and 14 p.i.
Presence of E. sakazakii in the organs of neonatal gerbils after oral and i.p. inoculation with 109 cells of strain 2871