Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0017160 (gastroenteritis)
 11,398 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

In June 2001, the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services/Public Health conducted a cohort study of an outbreak of acute febrile gastroenteritis among 16 of 44 healthy attendees of a catered party. The median age of the attendees who became ill was 15.5 years. Symptoms included body aches (in 88% of attendees), fever (81%), headache (81%), diarrhea (63%), and vomiting (56%). Illness was associated with ingestion of precooked, sliced turkey (P=.000004). Six stool specimens yielded Listeria monocytogenes. Leftover turkey yielded L. monocytogenes, 1.6x10(9) cfu/g. All isolates were serotype 1/2a and had matching molecular fingerprints. Clusters of suspect cases were identified among attendees at 2 other catered events, but no additional cases were confirmed. This is only the third reported outbreak of L. monocytogenes-associated gastroenteritis in the United States. In cases of febrile gastroenteritis for which routine cultures for enteric pathogens are negative, clinicians should suspect listeriosis and should consider asking laboratories to retain stool specimens to expedite testing for Listeria organisms.
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PMID:An outbreak of febrile gastroenteritis associated with delicatessen meat contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes. 1235 81

In 2000, the OzFoodNet network was established to enhance surveillance of foodborne diseases across Australia. OzFoodNet consists of 7 sites and covers 68 per cent of Australia's population. During 2001, sites reported 15,815 cases of campylobacteriosis, 6,607 cases of salmonellosis, 326 cases of shigellosis, 71 cases of yersiniosis, 61 cases of listeriosis, 47 cases of shiga-toxin producing E. coli and 5 cases of haemolytic uraemic syndrome. Sites reported 86 foodborne outbreaks affecting 1,768 people, of whom 4.0 per cent (70/1,768) were hospitalised and one person died. There was a wide range of foods implicated in these outbreaks and the most common agent was S. Typhimurium. Sites reported two international outbreaks; one of multi-drug resistant S. Typhimurium Definitive Type 104 due to helva imported from Turkey, and one of S. Stanley associated with dried peanuts from China. The National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health conducted a national survey of gastroenteritis. Preliminary data from interviews of 2,417 people suggests that the incidence of foodborne illness is significantly higher than previously thought. OzFoodNet initiated case control studies into risk factors for Campylobacter, Salmonella, Listeria, and shiga-toxin producing E. coli. OzFoodNet developed a foodborne disease outbreak register for Australia; established a network of laboratories to type Campylobacter; prepared a survey of pathology laboratories; reviewed Australian data on listeriosis; and assessed the usefulness of sentinel surveillance for gastroenteritis. This program of enhanced surveillance has demonstrated its capacity to nationally investigate and determine the causes of foodborne disease.
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PMID:Enhancing foodborne disease surveillance across Australia in 2001: the OzFoodNet Working Group. 1241 2

Outbreaks of listeriosis and febrile gastroenteritis have been linked to produce contamination by Listeria monocytogenes. In order to begin to understand the physiology of the organism in a produce habitat, the ability of L. monocytogenes to attach to freshly cut radish tissue was examined. All strains tested had the capacity to attach sufficiently well such that they could not be removed during washing of the radish slices. A screen was developed to identify Tn917-LTV3 mutants that were defective in attachment to radish tissue, and three were characterized. Two of the three mutations were in genes with unknown functions. Both of the unknown genes mapped to a region predicted to contain genes necessary for flagellar export; however, only one of the two insertions caused a motility defect. The third insertion was found to be in an operon encoding a phosphoenolpyruvate-sugar phosphotransferase system. All three mutants were defective in attachment when tested at 30 degrees C; the motility mutant had the most severe phenotype. However, not all of the mutants were defective when tested at other temperatures. These results indicate that L. monocytogenes may use different attachment factors at different temperatures and that temperature should be considered an important variable in studies of the molecular mechanisms of Listeria fitness in complex environments.
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PMID:Attachment of Listeria monocytogenes to radish tissue is dependent upon temperature and flagellar motility. 1251 3

Listeria monocytogenes is an uncommon cause of illness in the general population. However, this bacterium is an important cause of severe infections in neonates, pregnant women, the elderly, transplant recipients and other patients with impaired cell-mediated immunity. Various clinical syndromes due to L. monocytogenes have been described such as sepsis, central nervous system infections, endocarditis, gastroenteritis and localized infections. A review of the clinical presentation of listeriosis is given in this paper.
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PMID:Listeriosis: clinical presentation. 1264 33

In 2002, OzFoodNet continued to enhance surveillance of foodborne diseases across Australia. The OzFoodNet network expanded to cover all Australian states and territories in 2002. The National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health together with OzFoodNet concluded a national survey of gastroenteritis, which found that there were 17.2 (95% C.I. 14.5-19.9) million cases of gastroenteritis each year in Australia. The credible range of gastroenteritis that may be due to food each year is between 4.0-6.9 million cases with a mid-point of 5.4 million. During 2002, there were 23,434 notifications of eight bacterial diseases that may have been foodborne, which was a 7.7 per cent increase over the mean of the previous four years. There were 14,716 cases of campylobacteriosis, 7,917 cases of salmonellosis, 505 cases of shigellosis, 99 cases of yersiniosis, 64 cases of typhoid, 62 cases of listeriosis, 58 cases of shiga toxin producing E. coli and 13 cases of haemolytic uraemic syndrome. OzFoodNet sites reported 92 foodborne disease outbreaks affecting 1,819 persons, of whom 5.6 per cent (103/1,819) were hospitalised and two people died. There was a wide range of foods implicated in these outbreaks and the most common agent was Salmonella Typhimurium. Sites reported two outbreaks with potential for international spread involving contaminated tahini from Egypt resulting in an outbreak of Salmonella Montevideo infection and an outbreak of suspected norovirus infection associated with imported Japanese oysters. In addition, there were three outbreaks associated with animal petting zoos or poultry hatching programs and 318 outbreaks of suspected person-to-person transmission. Sites conducted 100 investigations into clusters of gastrointestinal illness where a source could not be identified, including three multi-state outbreaks of salmonellosis. OzFoodNet identified important risk factors for foodborne disease infection, including: Salmonella infections due to chicken and egg consumption, bakeries as a source of Salmonella infection, and problems associated with spit roast meals served by mobile caterers. There were marked improvements in surveillance during 2002, with all jurisdictions contributing to national cluster reports, increasing use of analytical studies to investigate outbreaks and 96.9 per cent of Salmonella notifications on state and territory surveillance databases recording complete information about serotype and phage type. During 2002, there were several investigations that showed the benefits of national collaboration to control foodborne disease. Sharing surveillance data from animals, humans and foods and rapid sharing of molecular typing information for human isolates of potentially foodborne organisms could further improve surveillance of foodborne disease in Australia.
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PMID:Foodborne disease in Australia: incidence, notifications and outbreaks. Annual report of the OzFoodNet network, 2002. 1292 36

Listeria monocytogenes is a food-borne pathogen that can cause a variety of illnesses ranging from gastroenteritis to life-threatening septicemia. The beta-lactam antibiotic ampicillin remains the drug of choice for the treatment of listeriosis. We have previously identified a response regulator of a putative two-component signal transduction system that plays a role in the virulence and ethanol tolerance of L. monocytogenes. Here we present evidence that the response regulator, CesR, and a histidine protein kinase, CesK, which is encoded by the gene downstream from cesR, are involved in the ability of L. monocytogenes to tolerate ethanol and cell wall-acting antibiotics of the beta-lactam family. Furthermore, CesRK controls the expression of a putative extracellular peptide encoded by the orf2420 gene, located immediately downstream from cesRK. Inactivation of orf2420 revealed that it contributes to ethanol tolerance and pathogenesis in mice. Interestingly, we found that transcription of orf2420 was strongly induced by subinhibitory concentrations of various cell wall-acting antibiotics, ethanol, and lysozyme. The induction of orf2420 expression was abolished in the absence of CesRK. Our data suggest that CesRK is involved in regulating aspects of the cell envelope architecture and that changes in cell wall integrity provide a potent stimulus for CesRK-mediated regulation. These results further our understanding of how L. monocytogenes senses and responds to antibiotics that are used therapeutically in the treatment of infectious diseases.
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PMID:CesRK, a two-component signal transduction system in Listeria monocytogenes, responds to the presence of cell wall-acting antibiotics and affects beta-lactam resistance. 1457 97

Listeria monocytogenes is a food-borne bacterial pathogen that causes a wide spectrum of diseases, such as meningitis, septicemia, abortion, and gastroenteritis, in humans and animals. Among the 13 L. monocytogenes serovars described, invasive disease is mostly associated with serovar 4b strains. To investigate the genetic diversity of L. monocytogenes strains with different virulence potentials, we partially sequenced an epidemic serovar 4b strain and compared it with the complete sequence of the nonepidemic L. monocytogenes EGDe serovar 1/2a strain. We identified an unexpected genetic divergence between the two strains, as about 8% of the sequences were serovar 4b specific. These sequences included seven genes coding for surface proteins, two of which belong to the internalin family, and three genes coding for transcriptional regulators, all of which might be important in different steps of the infectious process. Based on the sequence information, we then characterized the gene content of 113 Listeria strains by using a newly designed Listeria array containing the "flexible" part of the sequenced Listeria genomes. Hybridization results showed that all of the previously identified virulence factors of L. monocytogenes were present in the 93 L. monocytogenes strains tested. However, distinct patterns of the presence or absence of other genes were identified among the different L. monocytogenes serovars and Listeria species. These results allow new insights into the evolution of L. monocytogenes, suggesting that early divergence of the ancestral L. monocytogenes serovar 1/2c strains from the serovar 1/2b strains led to two major phylogenetic lineages, one of them including the serogroup 4 strains, which branched off the serovar 1/2b ancestral lineage, leading (mostly by gene loss) to the species Listeria innocua. The identification of 30 L. monocytogenes-specific and several serovar-specific marker genes, such as three L. monocytogenes serovar 4b-specific surface protein-coding genes, should prove powerful for the rapid tracing of listeriosis outbreaks, but it also represents a fundamental basis for the functional study of virulence differences between L. monocytogenes strains.
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PMID:New aspects regarding evolution and virulence of Listeria monocytogenes revealed by comparative genomics and DNA arrays. 1474 55

Listeria monocytogenes is the etiological agent of listeriosis, a severe human foodborne infection characterized by gastroenteritis, meningitis, encephalitis, abortions, and perinatal infections. This gram-positive bacterium is a facultative intracellular pathogen that induces its own uptake into nonphagocytic cells and spreads from cell to cell using an actin-based motility process. This review covers both well-established and recent advances in the characterization of L. monocytogenes virulence determinants and their role in the pathophysiology of listeriosis.
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PMID:Molecular determinants of Listeria monocytogenes virulence. 1548 49

Contamination of fresh produce with Listeria monocytogenes has resulted in outbreaks of systemic listeriosis and febrile gastroenteritis. Recalls of alfalfa sprouts have occurred due to contamination with L. monocytogenes. Alfalfa sprouts were used as a preharvest model to study the interaction with this human pathogen. Seventeen strains were assessed for their capacity to colonize alfalfa sprouts, and strain-specific differences (not related to source, serotype, or lineage) were revealed when the sprout irrigation water was changed daily. Two of the strains colonized and attached to the sprouts very well, reaching levels of more than 5 log CFU per sprout. The remaining strains varied in their final levels on sprouts between less than 1 to 4.7 log CFU per sprout. All of the L. monocytogenes strains grew to equivalent levels on the sprouts when the irrigation water was not changed, suggesting the differences observed with regular changing of the water resulted from differences in attachment. Further analysis of the best colonizing strains indicated that only between 0.3 and 1 log CFU per sprout could be removed by additional washing of the sprout, and the presence of normal sprout bacteria did not compete with the L. monocytogenes strains on the sprouts. The poorest colonizing strain was able to grow in the irrigation water during the experiment but could not attach to the sprouts. Microscopic examination of the sprouts with L. monocytogenes expressing the green fluorescent protein indicated that L. monocytogenes was associated with the root hairs of the sprouting alfalfa, with few to no cells visible elsewhere on the sprout.
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PMID:Strain-specific differences in the attachment of Listeria monocytogenes to alfalfa sprouts. 1555 32

In 2003, OzFoodNet conducted enhanced surveillance of foodborne diseases across Australia, which covered all states and territories. During 2003, there were 23,250 notifications of eight potentially foodborne diseases, of which 67 per cent and 30 per cent were due to Campylobacter and Salmonella infections respectively. The most common Salmonella serotype was Typhimurium, as in previous years. Most S. Enteritidis were acquired overseas, except for Queensland where 52 per cent of infections were acquired locally. Locally acquired S. Enteritidis infections in Australia were predominantly due to phage type 26. The most common serotype of Shiga toxin producing E. coli was O157, although for 49 per cent of notified infections serotype was unknown due to the use of polymerase chain reaction based screening tests. There were 12 materno-foetal listeriosis infections in 2003, which was an increase compared to recent years. During 2003, there were 444 outbreaks of gastroenteritis and foodborne disease recorded. Ninety-nine of these were of foodborne origin affecting 1,686 persons, hospitalising 105 and causing six deaths. A wide range of agents and foods caused these outbreaks, with Salmonella Typhimurium being the most common pathogen. Outbreaks associated with fish and seafood dishes, poultry meat, and Asian style and imported foods were common. Four outbreaks with international implications were reported: an outbreak of Salmonella in Montevideo involving contaminated tahini from the Middle East and three outbreaks of norovirus infection associated with imported Japanese oysters. Outbreak data indicated a need to monitor food safety in aged care settings, restaurants and catering. Eighty-nine investigations into clusters of gastrointestinal illness where a source could not be identified were conducted, including multi-state outbreaks of salmonellosis. One multistate investigation of antibiotic resistant Salmonella Paratyphi b Java identified 18 cases who had recent exposure to tropical fish aquariums. Ninety-seven per cent of Salmonella notifications on state and territory surveillance databases have complete information on serotype and phage type. In 2003, OzFoodNet demonstrated the benefits of national collaboration to control food borne disease.
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PMID:Foodborne disease investigation across Australia: annual report of the OzFoodNet network, 2003. 1557 61


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