Multistate outbreak of Listeriosis linked to turkey deli meat and subsequent changes in US regulatory policy.

BACKGROUND: Listeriosis, a life-threatening foodborne illness caused by Listeria monocytogenes, affects approximately 2500 Americans annually. Between July and October 2002, an uncommon strain of L. monocytogenes caused an outbreak of listeriosis in 9 states. METHODS: We conducted case finding, a case-control study, and traceback and microbiological investigations to determine the extent and source of the outbreak and to propose control measures. Case patients were infected with the outbreak strain of L. monocytogenes between July and November 2002 in 9 states, and control patients were infected with different L. monocytogenes strains. Outcome measures included food exposure associated with outbreak strain infection and source of the implicated food. RESULTS: Fifty-four case patients were identified; 8 died, and 3 pregnant women had fetal deaths. The case-control study included 38 case patients and 53 control patients. Case patients consumed turkey deli meat much more frequently than did control patients (P = .008, by Wilcoxon rank-sum test). In the 4 weeks before illness, 55% of case patients had eaten deli turkey breast more than 1-2 times, compared with 28% of control patients (odds ratio, 4.5; 95% confidence interval, 1.3-17.1). Investigation of turkey deli meat eaten by case patients led to several turkey processing plants. The outbreak strain was found in the environment of 1 processing plant and in turkey products from a second. Together, the processing plants recalled > 30 million pounds of products. Following the outbreak, the US Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service issued new regulations outlining a L. monocytogenes control and testing program for ready-to-eat meat and poultry processing plants. CONCLUSIONS: Turkey deli meat was the source of a large multistate outbreak of listeriosis. Investigation of this outbreak helped guide policy changes designed to prevent future L. monocytogenes contamination of ready-to-eat meat and poultry products.

Molecular surveillance of shiga toxigenic Escherichia coli O157 by PulseNet USA.

PulseNet USA is the national molecular subtyping network system for foodborne disease surveillance. Sixty-four public health and food regulatory laboratories participate in PulseNet USA and routinely perform pulsed-field gel electrophoresis of Shiga toxigenic Escherichia coli isolated from humans, food, water, and the environment on a real-time basis. Clusters of infection are detected in three ways within this system: through rapidly alerting the participants in the electronic communication forum, the PulseNet Web conference; through cluster analysis by the database administrators at the coordinating center at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the patterns uploaded to the central server by the participants; and by matching profiles of strains from nonhuman sources with recent human uploads to the national server. The strengths, limitations, and scope for future improvements of PulseNet are discussed with examples from 2002. In that year, notices of 30 clusters of Shiga toxigenic E. coli O157 infections were posted on the Web conference, 26 of which represented local outbreaks, whereas four were multistate outbreaks. Another 27 clusters were detected by central cluster detection performed at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, of which five represented common source outbreaks confirmed after finding an isolate with the outbreak pattern in the implicated food. Ten food isolates submitted without suspicion of an association to human disease matched human isolates in the database, and an epidemiologic link to human cases was established for six of them.

Microbiological aspects of the investigation that traced the 1998 outbreak of listeriosis in the United States to contaminated hot dogs and establishment of molecular subtyping-based surveillance for Listeria monocytogenes in the PulseNet network.

A multistate outbreak of listeriosis occurred in the United States in 1998 with illness onset dates between August and December. The outbreak caused illness in 108 persons residing in 24 states and caused 14 deaths and four miscarriages or stillbirths. This outbreak was detected by public health officials in Tennessee and New York who observed significant increases over expected listeriosis cases in their states. Subsequently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) began laboratory characterization of clinical isolates of Listeria monocytogenes by serotyping and restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis using pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). For the purpose of this investigation, outbreak-related isolates were defined as those that had a specific AscI-PFGE pattern and indistinguishable or highly similar (no more than 2 band difference in 26 bands) ApaI-PFGE patterns when their DNA was restricted by AscI and ApaI restriction enzymes. Timely availability of molecular subtyping results enabled epidemiologists to separate outbreak cases from temporally associated sporadic cases in the same geographic areas and facilitated the identification of contaminated hot dogs manufactured at a single commercial facility as the source of the outbreak. During the investigation of this outbreak, a standardized protocol for subtyping L. monocytogenes by PFGE was developed and disseminated to public health laboratories participating with CDC's PulseNet network; these laboratories were requested to begin routine PFGE subtyping of L. monocytogenes.

Multistate outbreak of Listeria monocytogenes infection linked to delicatessen turkey meat.

BACKGROUND: Despite a decreasing incidence of listeriosis in the United States, molecular subtyping has increased the number of recognized outbreaks. In September 2000, the New York City Department of Health identified a cluster of infections caused by Listeria monocytogenes isolates with identical molecular subtypes by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) and ribotyping. METHODS: To determine the magnitude of the outbreak and identify risk factors for infection, we notified state health departments and conducted a case-control study. A case was defined as a patient or mother-infant pair infected with Listeria monocytogenes whose isolate yielded the outbreak PFGE pattern. Controls were patients infected with Listeria monocytogenes whose isolate yielded a different PFGE pattern. Patients were asked about food and drink consumed during the 30 days before the onset of illness. RESULTS: Between May and December 2000, there were 30 clinical isolates of Listeria monocytogenes with identical PFGE patterns identified in 11 US states. Cases of infection caused by these isolates were associated with 4 deaths and 3 miscarriages. A case-control study implicated sliced processed turkey from a delicatessen (Mantel-Haenszel odds ratio, 8.0; 95% confidence interval, 1.2-43.3). A traceback investigation identified a single processing plant as the likely source of the outbreak, and the company voluntarily recalled 16 million pounds of processed meat. The same plant had been identified in a Listeria contamination event that had occurred more than a decade previously. CONCLUSIONS: Prevention of persistent L. monocytogenes contamination in food processing plants presents a critical challenge to food safety professionals.

Establishment of a universal size standard strain for use with the PulseNet standardized pulsed-field gel electrophoresis protocols: converting the national databases to the new size standard.

The PulseNet National Database, established by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1996, consists of pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) patterns obtained from isolates of food-borne pathogens (currently Escherichia coli O157:H7, Salmonella, Shigella, and Listeria) and textual information about the isolates. Electronic images and accompanying text are submitted from over 60 U.S. public health and food regulatory agency laboratories. The PFGE patterns are generated according to highly standardized PFGE protocols. Normalization and accurate comparison of gel images require the use of a well-characterized size standard in at least three lanes of each gel. Originally, a well-characterized strain of each organism was chosen as the reference standard for that particular database. The increasing number of databases, difficulty in identifying an organism-specific standard for each database, the increased range of band sizes generated by the use of additional restriction endonucleases, and the maintenance of many different organism-specific strains encouraged us to search for a more versatile and universal DNA size marker. A Salmonella serotype Braenderup strain (H9812) was chosen as the universal size standard. This strain was subjected to rigorous testing in our laboratories to ensure that it met the desired criteria, including coverage of a wide range of DNA fragment sizes, even distribution of bands, and stability of the PFGE pattern. The strategy used to convert and compare data generated by the new and old reference standards is described.

Outbreak of listeriosis among Mexican immigrants as a result of consumption of illicitly produced Mexican-style cheese.

BACKGROUND: In 2000, an outbreak of listeriosis among Hispanic persons was identified in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The objectives of the present study were to identify the source of, strains associated with, and risk factors for Listeria monocytogenes infection for patients affected by the outbreak. METHODS: Microbiological, case-control, and environmental investigations were conducted. Participants in the case-control study were case patients who became infected with L. monocytogenes between 1 October 2000 and 31 January 2001 and control subjects who were matched with case patients on the basis of ethnicity, sex, age, and pregnancy status. All participants were residents of Winston-Salem. RESULTS: We identified 13 patients, all of whom were Hispanic, including 12 females who were 18-38 years of age. Eleven case patients were pregnant; infection with L. monocytogenes resulted in 5 stillbirths, 3 premature deliveries, and 3 infected newborns. Case patients were more likely than control subjects to have eaten the following foods: fresh, unlabeled, Mexican-style cheese sold by door-to-door vendors (matched odds ratio [MOR], 17.5; 95% confidence interval [CI], 2.0-152.5); queso fresco, a Mexican-style soft cheese (MOR, 7.3; 95% CI, 1.4-37.5); and hot dogs (MOR, 4.6; 95% CI, 1.1-19.4). L. monocytogenes isolates recovered from 10 female case patients, from cheese bought from a door-to-door vendor, from unlabeled cheese from 2 Hispanic markets, and from raw milk from a local dairy had indistinguishable patterns on pulsed-field gel electrophoresis. CONCLUSIONS: This outbreak of listeriosis was caused by noncommercial, fresh, Mexican-style cheese made from contaminated raw milk traced to 1 local dairy. We recommend educating Hispanic women about food safety while they are pregnant, enforcing laws that regulate the sale of raw milk and dairy products made by unlicensed manufacturers, making listeriosis a reportable disease in all states, routinely interviewing case patients, and routinely subtyping clinical L. monocytogenes isolates.

Escherichia coli O157 cluster evaluation.

We investigated a multistate cluster of Escherichia coli O157:H7 isolates; pulsed-field gel electrophoresis subtyping, using a single enzyme, suggested an epidemiologic association. An investigation and additional subtyping, however, did not support the association. Confirmating E. coli O157 clusters with two or more restriction endonucleases is necessary before public health resources are allocated to follow-up investigations.

An outbreak of Escherichia coli O157:H7 infections among visitors to a dairy farm.

BACKGROUND: Outbreaks of Escherichia coli O157:H7 infections have involved direct transmission from animals and their environment to humans. We describe an outbreak among visitors to a Pennsylvania dairy and petting farm that provides public access to animals. METHODS: We conducted both a case-control study among visitors to a farm to identify risk factors for infection and a household survey to determine the rates of diarrheal illness among these visitors. We performed an extensive environmental study to identify sources of E. coli O157:H7 on the farm. RESULTS: Fifty-one patients with confirmed or suspected E. coli O157:H7 infection were enrolled in the case-control study. The median age of the patients was four years, and the hemolytic-uremic syndrome developed in eight. Contact with calves and their environment was associated with an increased risk of infection, whereas hand washing was protective. The household survey indicated that visitors to the farm during the outbreak had higher than expected rates of diarrhea. Environmental studies showed that 28 of the 216 cattle on the farm (13 percent) were colonized with E. coli O157:H7 that had the same distinct pattern on pulsed-field gel electrophoresis that was found in isolates from the patients. This organism was also recovered from surfaces that were accessible to the public. CONCLUSIONS: In a large outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 infections among visitors to a dairy farm, predominantly children, high rates of carriage of E. coli O157:H7 among calves and young cattle most likely resulted in contamination of both the animals' hides and the environment.