LISTERIA: EPIDEMIOLOGY, PATHOGENESIS AND NOVEL POTENTIAL TREATMENTS

LUCILA SAAVEDRA; AUGUSTO BELLOMIO; ELVIRA MARÍA HEBERT; CARLOS MINAHK; NADIA SUAREZ; FERNANDO SESMA

Listeria Infections: Epidemiology, Pathogenesis and Treatment

Nova Publishers

Lugar: New York; Año: 2012; p. 67 - 98

Microbial food-borne illnesses have a great impact not only in public health but also represent high economic costs for many countries around the world. Listeria monocytogenes, a Gram-positive facultative intracellular pathogen, is estimated to cause nearly 1,600 illnesses each year in the United States.Listeriosis may have different clinical syndromes from a non-invasive form in healthy human usually associated to mild gastroenteritis to severe invasive form, especially during pregnancy and in people with compromised immune system. In this case, it can be a serious and sometimes fatal disease. The transmission can occur by different ways, being the most important one the consumption of contaminated food, especially ready-to-eat products. Many efforts have been made in order to control o minimize the presence of this pathogen in food and food processing areas.Besides the new antilisterial technologies that are being explored such as surface pasteurization or ozone treatments, antimicrobial peptides called bacteriocins produced by GRAS microorganisms such as lactic acid bacteria arise as a potential solution in this field.There are many Listeria-active bacteriocins described so far in the literature and products containing purified or semi-purified bacteriocins are already in the market. Moreover, some anti-listerial bacteriocins proved to be active not only in food environments but also in listeria-infected mice models.In this chapter, an updated description of outbreaks, pathogenesis as well as the new technology for controlling Listeria is presented.