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Page No. : 137-151

ABSTRACT

Clostridium perfringens is one of the important foodborne pathogen of human and animals causing both histotoxic and intestinal infections. Human and food animals are important reservoirs of enterotoxin (CPE) positive C. perfringens strains, posing a risk into foods, primarily through cross contamination or miss-handling of meat and meat products. Based on the production of six major toxins [α (cpa), β (cpb), ε (etx), ι (iap and ibp), CPE and NetB), C. perfringens is divided into seven toxin types (A-G). Besides these toxin-types, it also produces
beta2 and an array of other lethal toxins. Despite wide distribution of C. perfringens in the environment, only a small fraction (1-5%) of C. perfringens type strains isolated from humans and animals have been demonstrated to carry the C. perfringens enterotoxin gene (cpe). These enterotoxigenic C. perfringens strains are responsible for food poisoning incidences, antibiotic associated diarrhoea (AAD) and sporadic diarrhoea (SD) in humans. Several typing methods such as, serotyping, bacteriocin typing, phage typing, plasmid profile typing, ribotyping, pulse field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), multilocus sequence typing (MLST), randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD), repetitive element PCR (rep-PCR) and amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) are commonly used for differentiation of C. perfringens strains. In recent years, the indiscriminate and long-term use of antimicrobial agents for growth promotion, prophylactic, and therapeutic purposes led to the development of antimicrobial resistance among C. perfringens strains. This comprehensive review highlights a brief introduction about toxinotypes, disease caused in animals and humans, epidemiology, diagnosis and antimicrobial resistance pattern of C. perfringens strains recovered from humans, animal and associated environment.

Keywords: Antimicrobial resistance, Clostridium perfringens, diagnosis, epidemiology, foodborne pathogen