Atypical Toxigenic Staphylococcus and Non-Staphylococcus aureus Species on the Horizon? An Update†

Abstract

Staphylococcal food poisoning is a commonly reported illness caused by the ingestion of preformed staphylococcal enterotoxin in foods, With some exceptions, enterotoxin production is associated with coagulase-positive rather than coagulase-negative staphylococci. Of the coagulase-positive staphylococcal species, S. aureus was historically thought to be exclusively implicated in human foodborne illness. More recently, however, other coagulase-positive and some coagulase-negative staphylococcal species have been associated with foodborne intoxication, Coagulase activity has been used to indicate pathogenicity of a foodborne isolate, and thermostable nuclease is being suggested as a more reliable indictor of enterotoxigenicity. Evidence suggests that the metabolic expressions that are the bases of the tests may not be reliable indicators of pathogenicity. A more useful approach to determine the pathogenicity of a Staphylococcus species is to test directly for enterotoxigenicity with one of the new rapid methods. None of the conventional ancillary identification tests has been conclusively associated with enterotoxin synthesis. Furthermore, evidence exists that enterotoxin production is a characteristic of several species in the genus Staphylococcus.