Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) is regarded as the major cause of infectious diarrhea in humans after antimicrobial treatment. C. difficile has been reported to be widely isolated from food animals and meat. The main purpose of this study was to characterize C. difficile isolates from retail fresh vegetable (lettuce), test the antibiotic-resistance property using five common clinical-selected antibiotics (metronidazole, vancomycin, clindamycin, erythromycin, and cefotaxime). Lettuces (grown in California, Arkansas, and Louisiana) were purchased from retail stores. Toxigenic C. difficile was isolated from 13.8% (41/297) of the lettuce samples. Among the toxigenic isolates, 82.9% (34/41) only produce toxin B, and 17.1% (7/41) produced both toxin A and toxin B. Under the treatment of the five antibiotics, the virulence C. difficile isolates were identified as having antibiotic resistance to metronidazole, vancomycin, and erythromycin. The present study reports the highest toxigenic C. difficile yield rate from varieties of retail vegetables (lettuce) in the USA. The antibiotic resistance to metronidazole, vancomycin, and erythromycin of the isolated C. difficle from varieties of retail lettuces could lead to public health concerns.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LSU/oai:etd.lsu.edu:etd-07072016-015631 |
| Date | 26 July 2016 |
| Creators | Han, Yi |
| Contributors | Janes, E Marlene, Losso, N Jack, King, M Joan, Li, Bin |
| Publisher | LSU |
| Source Sets | Louisiana State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-07072016-015631/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached herein a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to LSU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below and in appropriate University policies, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
Page generated in 0.0023 seconds