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Applied and Environmental Microbiology, January 2007, p. 48-52, Vol. 73, No. 1
0099-2240/07/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/AEM.01562-06
Copyright © 2007, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

School of Biomedical and Natural Sciences, Nottingham Trent University, Clifton Lane, Nottingham NG11 8NS, United Kingdom
Received 6 July 2006/ Accepted 13 October 2006
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-glucosidase activity, and a number of selective, chromogenic agars for E. sakazakii isolation based on this enzyme have been developed. E. sakazakii isolation agar produced fewer false-positive colonies than did Druggan-Forsythe-Iversen agar. However, the latter supported the growth of more E. sakazakii strains. It was also determined that 2% of E. sakazakii strains did not produce yellow pigmentation on tryptone soya agar at 25°C, a characteristic frequently cited in the identification of E. sakazakii. The recovery of desiccated E. sakazakii (0.2 to 2000 CFU/25 g) from powdered IFM in the presence of a competing flora was determined with various enrichment broths and differential selective media. Current media designed for the isolation and presumptive identification of E. sakazakii do not support the growth of all currently known E. sakazakii phenotypes; therefore, improvements in the proposed methods are desirable. |
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Several methods have been proposed for the enrichment and isolation of E. sakazakii (6, 11, 21). An integral part of all methods is the
-glucosidase test (16). However, a number of other Enterobacteriaceae are
-glucosidase positive (14, 15), and coisolation of these organisms lowers the efficiency of chromogenic media for the isolation of E. sakazakii. Although E. sakazakii can be recovered from 3 to 14% of IFM samples, reported levels have never exceeded 1 CFU g1 (10, 17, 18). Therefore, specific and sensitive enrichment is required for isolation of the organism.
Farmer et al. (3) reported reduced plating efficiency of E. sakazakii strains on media commonly used in enteric bacteriology. It has also been noted that some E. sakazakii strains are unable to grow in lauryl sulfate broth (LST) or brilliant green bile broth (12). As the latter strains also failed to grow in Enterobacteriaceae enrichment broth (EE), it was deemed necessary to design a modified enrichment medium to aid comparison of the selective media. This study reports a comparison between currently proposed enrichment and isolation media for the detection of E. sakazakii.
(A preliminary report of this work was presented at the 105th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology [13]).
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-glucosidase-positive Enterobacteriaceae were Buttiauxella noakiae and strains from two as-yet-unnamed species identified as distinct 16S cluster groups (14, 15). The remaining strains were Enterobacter pyrinus, Enterobacter cloacae, Citrobacter koseri, Citrobacter freundii, Citrobacter braakii, Enterobacter asburiae, Enterobacter aerogenes, Enterobacter amnigenus, Escherichia hermanii, Escherichia coli, Hafnia alvei, Klebsiella oxytoca, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Klebsiella ozaenae, Raoultella terrigena, Kluyvera sp., Leclercia adecarboxylata, Pantoea sp., Proteus vulgaris, Providencia rettgeri, Salmonella enterica serovar Enteritidis, Serratia marcescens, and Serratia ficaria.
Growth media.
The following media were prepared according to the manufacturers' instructions: buffered peptone water (BPW) (CM0509; Oxoid, Basingstoke, United Kingdom), EE (CM0317; Oxoid), modified LST (mLST) (CM0451; Oxoid) with 0.5 M NaCl and 10 mg l1 vancomycin) (6), violet red bile glucose agar (VRBGA) (CM0485; Oxoid), violet red bile lactose agar (VRBL) (CM0107; Oxoid), E. sakazakii chromogenic agar (Druggan-Forsythe-Iversen [DFI] formulation) (CM1055; Oxoid) (11), and tryptone soya agar (TSA) (CM0131; Oxoid). E. sakazakii isolation agar (ESIA) (AEB520010; AES Laboratoire) (8) and E. sakazakii selective broth (ESSB) (AEB611448; AES Laboratoire) were purchased as prepared media. Milk agar was prepared as follows: bacteriological agar (3.0 g) (LP0011; Oxoid) and ammonium sulfate were dissolved in 40 ml of distilled water. After autoclaving, 200 ml of warm (55°C) liquid IFM was added and the mixture was dispensed into petri dishes.
E. sakazakii enrichment broth (ESE) was composed of disodium hydrogen phosphate (6.5 g), potassium dihydrogen phosphate (2.0 g), yeast extract (1.5 g), neutralized peptone (4.0 g), base tryptone (12.0 g), sodium chloride (4.0 g), sucrose (100.0 g), and sodium deoxycholate (0.5 g) dissolved in distilled water (1,000 ml). The complete medium (pH 7.0 ± 0.1) was autoclaved at 121°C for 15 min.
Growth measurement.
Enrichment broths were inoculated (1 x 104 CFU ml1) with overnight cultures diluted in sterile saline. Initially, growth was determined by measuring the change in optical density at 590 nm (OD590) at 37°C and 44°C with a TECAN SPECTRA Fluor instrument (TECAN United Kingdom Ltd., Reading, United Kingdom). Due to the inability to detect growth of some E. sakazakii strains in selective media with the OD measurements, 10 ml of EE, ESSB, and mLST were inoculated (1 x 107 CFU ml1) from overnight cultures into BPW (18 E. sakazakii strains and 21 strains of other Enterobacteriaceae). After a 24-h incubation, the viable counts were determined by decimal dilutions on TSA incubated at 37°C.
Recovery of desiccated E. sakazakii from powdered IFM containing competing organisms.
Three strains of E. sakazakii (NCTC 11467T, ATCC 12868, and SK90) were grown overnight on milk agar at 37°C. These strains are the species type strain, the ATCC Perceptrol quality control strain, and a clinical strain kindly supplied by Franco Pagotto (19), respectively. The cells were harvested from the plates and resuspended in sterile infant formula to give cell densities of ca. 1011 CFU/ml prior to freeze-drying. The freeze-dried samples were stored for 4 weeks prior to use for the bacterial concentrations to stabilize. The bacterial viable cell counts in the desiccated samples were estimated by a most-probable-number technique (n = 8) in BPW prior to inoculation of powdered IFM. Appropriate quantities of desiccated cells were used to inoculate triplicate 25-g quantities of commercial milk-based powdered infant formula (Cow & Gate Premium Stage 1) at 0.2 to 2,000 CFU 25g1. The IFM contained endogenous Bacillus spp., and one aliquot contained endogenous Raoultella terrigena. All aliquots were additionally inoculated with yellow-pigmented Enterobacteriaceae isolates comprising an
-glucosidase-positive strain and an
-glucosidase-negative Pantoea strain at 0.4 CFU g1.
Four recovery methods were compared: FDA (http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/
comm/mmesakaz.html), DFI (11; also this study), mLST (6), and AES (http://www.aeslaboratoire.com/). For convenience, the preenrichment, enrichment, primary isolation, and presumptive identification steps for each of these methods are summarized in Table 1. Up to five presumptive isolates were selected and identified by biochemical profiles with an API20E instrument (bioMérieux United Kingdom Ltd.) according to the manufacturer's instructions.
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TABLE 1. Methods for the recovery of desiccated E. sakazakii from powdered IFM
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-glucosidase-positive Enterobacteriaceae did not utilize sucrose. Therefore, with sucrose in place of dextrose and/or lactose, E. sakazakii was able to outgrow other Enterobacteriaceae in ESE (Fig. 1). Sodium deoxycholate was included as a selective agent to suppress gram-positive organisms.
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FIG. 1. Comparative growth of E. sakazakii and other organisms in ESE. Error bars represent the mean ± the standard error of the sample mean, calculated from the standard deviation of the sample mean divided by n. A difference in OD590 of 0.5 is equivalent to ca. 0.5 log10 CFU ml1.
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TABLE 2. Strains showing increases in OD after 24 h of incubation in enrichment media
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FIG. 2. Growth, persistence, and death of E. sakazakii and competitive organisms in enrichment broths.
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TABLE 3. Growth of E. sakazakii and other Enterobacteriaceae on various selective and differential agars
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TABLE 4. Recovery of E. sakazakii from powdered IFM in the presence of competing flora by four isolation methods
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-glucosidase-positive Enterobacteriaceae did not. Therefore, ESE broth was formulated to support good growth of E. sakazakii compared with competing organisms (Fig. 1). Although other Enterobacteriaceae also utilize sucrose, these are mainly
-glucosidase-negative organisms and so can be differentiated on current chromogenic media. As E. sakazakii has been shown to have greater desiccation tolerance than most other Enterobacteriaceae (1; J. Caubilla-Baron and S. J. Forsythe, submitted for publication), a high concentration of sucrose was incorporated into the broth to act as a humectant, lowering the available water. Sodium deoxycholate was incorporated to suppress the growth of gram-positive bacteria.
All E. sakazakii isolates grew at 37°C in ESE, but 2 to 4% (n = 177) of the strains were undetected in EE, mLST, or ESSB. Assessment of the viability of these strains by standard plate counts showed that, for five strains, one or more of the selective media were bactericidal. There have been previous reports of E. sakazakii strains failing to grow in mLST (15), as well as in LST and brilliant green bile broth (12). Other
-glucosidase-positive organisms lost their viability in mLST to a greater extent than did E. sakazakii. Therefore, the selectivity of this medium is not necessarily a result of the increased growth of E. sakazakii but of the greater die-off of nontarget cells.
All strains produced characteristic red colonies on VRBGA and VRBLA. However, these media are selective only for Enterobacteriaceae and coliforms, respectively, and are not specific for E. sakazakii. They are therefore of use with respect to general hygiene monitoring but not for detection of specific pathogens, such as Salmonella and E. sakazakii. At the recommended incubation temperatures of 37 and 44°C, respectively, 99% of E. sakazakii strains grew on DFI agar but only 96% on ESIA. Incubation of DFI at 44°C (above the manufacturer's recommendation of 37°C) resulted in 7% of strains not showing the characteristic blue-green colony morphology. As 1% of E. sakazakii strains were unable to grow on nonselective medium (TSA) at 44°C, incubation at this temperature may not ensure the recovery of E. sakazakii.
Detection methods should be evaluated with desiccated E. sakazakii cells in the presence of competing flora to mimic environmental samples from manufacturing facilities. Comparison of four methods for the recovery of desiccated E. sakazakii from IFM indicated that the most sensitive method was preenrichment in BPW, followed by enrichment in ESE and plating on DFI agar (Table 4). However, at the lower inoculum levels, this method produced a large number of false-positive colonies on DFI. The presence of competing organisms reduced the sensitivity of the FDA method, and the AES method recovered only the E. sakazakii type strain. The mLST method was not as sensitive as the DFI method at low inoculum levels but produced fewer presumptive false positives. As one of the strains used in this experiment was sensitive to lauryl sulfate, the ability of the mLST method to recover it at the higher inoculum levels suggests that this method works better in the presence of the sample matrix (IFM) than when used for pure cultures. This may be due to divalent cations in the IFM counteracting the effects of the lauryl sulfate. Therefore, the performance of the mLST method may be reduced if used for other sample matrices.
This study has used a large number (n = 177) of E. sakazakii strains to demonstrate that the levels of selective agents such as crystal violet, sodium lauryl sulfate, brilliant green, and sodium deoxycholate in media need to be reassessed to ensure the recovery of the organism, especially from mixed cultures. The use of sucrose (100 g/liter) in ESE promoted the growth of E. sakazakii relative to other
-glucosidase-positive Enterobacteriaceae. However, this broth is not selective enough to be considered a viable alternative enrichment method, and further development of effective media for the isolation of E. sakazakii is needed.
We are particularly grateful to Patrick Druggan for expert advice on medium composition.
Published ahead of print on 27 October 2006. ![]()
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-glucosidase reaction and reproducibility of the test system. J. Clin. Microbiol. 20:684-686.
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