Pathogenic Escherichia coli (E. coli) food borne outbreak: Detection methods and controlling measures

Food-borne illnesses and diseases are major threats to human health. Common food borne pathogens include bacteria such as Escherichia coli Serogroup (O157), Bacillus cereus, Clostridium botulinum, Campylobacter sp., C. perfringens, some Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella spp., Shigella spp., Staphylococcus aureus, and Vibrio spp. etc. Pathogenic E. coli infection usually causes severe diarrhea. Escherichia coli is the most common cause of acute urinary tract infections as well as urinary tract sepsis. Diarrheagenic E. coli pathotypes can be passed in the feces of humans and other animals. Safeguarding public health during mass gatherings is a big challenge. Despite the recent advances in food preservation techniques and food safety, significant disease outbreaks linked to food borne pathogens such as bacteria, fungi, and viruses still occur worldwide indicating that these pathogens still constitute significant risks to public health. However, at present the conventional method for E. coli detection requires several days, especially in cases where E. coli concentrations are low. Enrichment is a commonly used method for bacterial isolation to increase the cell counts of target bacteria. However, traditional culturing method is also a slow and laborious process requiring a series of steps and may require the use of adjunct methods (e.g. biochemical, serological, nucleic acid-based methods for conclusive identification) and can take up to a week for bacteria. The culture-based approaches coupled with other methods such as PCR, immunoassays, bacteriophages, NGS, Biosensors, and MALDI TOF MS are increasingly being used for the detection and identification of food borne pathogens. Nucleic acid-based methods such as Real-Time PCR and vPCR combined with sequencing approaches are more widely used than immunoassay and NGS-based approaches for pathogen detection. Nanobiotechnology is the latest approach for the detection of pathogens. Bacteriophages are one such unique biological entity that showed excellent host selectivity and have been actively used as recognition probes for pathogen detection. Antibiotics are efficient, powerful, and the most commonly used treatment against pathogenic E. coli. Other ways to treat or prevent E. coli contamination, such as probiotics, antimicrobial nanoparticles, and radiation treatment had been reported.