Prevalence of Shiga-toxigenic Escherichia coli in cuts of meat and giblets pigs slaughtered in West Santa Catarina
Factors of virulence, public health, food, consumers.
Shiga-toxigenic Escherichia coli (STEC) is recognized as an emerging pathogen group and has become a challenge to public health. STEC has virulence, stx and eae factors, which characterize the strain as pathogenic. The toxins expressed by the stx genes inhibit the synthesis of proteins within target cells by a mechanism similar to that of ricin; the intimin gene, eae, expresses an essential protein to promote the intima binding of the bacterium to the surface of the gastrointestinal cells determining the ability of the bacterium to cause serious diseases in humans. In this sense, the objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of STEC strains in cuts and giblets pigs in a slaughterhouse in the West of Santa Catarina and to determine the prevalent virulence genes. The variables studied are nominal qualitative. A total of 356 samples from different porcine cuts, fillet, canopy, palette, shank, rib of loin, heart and liver, from three geographically distinct units were evaluated. All samples were analyzed by real-time PCR using a kit, iQ-Check® STEC VirX, supplied by Bio-Rad. In total, 95 samples were identified with presence of virulence factors for E. coli, 67 for eae, 10 for stx1/stx2 and 18 for stx1/stx2 /eae. The highest prevalence for the eae gene was found in the heart (43.28%), loin rib (20.89%) and liver (17.91%), the stx1 / stx2 genes presented a prevalence of 20% for heart, rib loin, liver, fillet and shank. When evaluating the results for stx1/stx2/eae, data very similar to the eae gene were found, heart (38.88%), rib of loin (22.22%) and liver (16.66%) being the most prevalent. The data demonstrate that pork products are contaminated with E. coli, but most of them offer little or no health risk to consumers since only the protein and / or shigatoxigenic toxin is not sufficient to cause disease.