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Review
. 2020 Nov 5;12(11):701.
doi: 10.3390/toxins12110701.

The Bacillus cereus Food Infection as Multifactorial Process

Nadja Jessberger  1 , Richard Dietrich  1 , Per Einar Granum  2 , Erwin Märtlbauer  1
Affiliations
Review

The Bacillus cereus Food Infection as Multifactorial Process

Nadja Jessberger et al. Toxins (Basel). .

Abstract

The ubiquitous soil bacterium Bacillus cereus presents major challenges to food safety. It is responsible for two types of food poisoning, the emetic form due to food intoxication and the diarrheal form emerging from food infections with enteropathogenic strains, also known as toxico-infections, which are the subject of this review. The diarrheal type of food poisoning emerges after production of enterotoxins by viable bacteria in the human intestine. Basically, the manifestation of the disease is, however, the result of a multifactorial process, including B. cereus prevalence and survival in different foods, survival of the stomach passage, spore germination, motility, adhesion, and finally enterotoxin production in the intestine. Moreover, all of these processes are influenced by the consumed foodstuffs as well as the intestinal microbiota which have, therefore, to be considered for a reliable prediction of the hazardous potential of contaminated foods. Current knowledge regarding these single aspects is summarized in this review aiming for risk-oriented diagnostics for enteropathogenic B. cereus.

Keywords: Bacillus cereus; adhesion; enterotoxins; food poisoning; motility; outbreaks; risk evaluation; spores; toxico-infection.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study, in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.

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