ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Infectious Diseases: Epidemiology and Prevention
Traceability Analysis of a Foodborne Disease Outbreak Caused by Clostridium perfringens in Ma'anshan City, Anhui Province, 2024
Provisionally accepted
- 1Maanshan Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Maanshan, China
- 2Anhui Medical University, Hefei, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Objectives: This study aimed to perform laboratory testing and traceability analysis of suspicious samples from a foodborne disease outbreak caused by Clostridium perfringens(C. perfringens) in a hospital in Ma'anshan City, Anhui Province, and to evaluate the application of whole-genome sequencing technology in the tracing of foodborne disease outbreaks. Methods: On-site epidemiological investigations were conducted, and suspicious biological, food, and environmental samples were collected. Patient biological samples underwent multi-pathogen screening. Following the epidemiological analysis, isolation, culture, and identification of suspected pathogens were carried out. Toxin gene detection and whole-genome sequencing were then performed on the isolated C. perfringens strains. Results: A total of 131 samples were collected during the outbreak. Among these, 20 anal swabs from patients with diarrhoea were tested for the nucleic acids of foodborne pathogens and five types of Diarrheagenic Escherichia coli. All samples tested positive for C. perfringens nucleic acid, while six samples also tested positive for enteropathogenic E. coli. Isolation and culture revealed that C. perfringens was detected in 41 samples, with a detection rate of 31.3% (41/131). Nucleic acid detection of six toxin genes(plc, cpb, cpe, Ia, etx, netB) was performed on the 41 C. perfringens strains, with 29 strains testing positive for cpe. Whole-genome sequencing of the cpe-positive strains revealed identical ST sequence types and a maximum of 25 SNP differences, indicating a highly clonal group. Phylogenetic analysis of the core genome demonstrated homology among C. perfringens strains from patient anal swabs, canteen employees's anal swabs, and food samples. Conclusions: The outbreak was likely caused by contamination of Chinese food by C. perfringens from infected canteen employees. Whole-genome sequencing was instrumental in accurately tracing the source of the outbreak.
Keywords: Clostridium perfringens1, Foodborne diseases2, Toxin gene3, whole-genome sequencing4, Traceability analysis5
Received: 11 Aug 2025; Accepted: 02 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 wang, Luo, Sun, Lu, Chen and Jiang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Liang Liang Jiang
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.