ABSTRACT
Clostridium perfringens food poisoning is characterized by the onset of diarrhea and abdominal pain 8 to 24 hr after the ingestion of food containing large numbers of vegetative cells. The principal habitats are soil, sewage, and the intestinal tract of man and animals, and it can be readily isolated from a wide range of foodstuffs including meat and poultry, fish, vegetables, and spices. In England a new antiserum was usually prepared only when a large number of serologically non-typable strains were isolated from an episode of food poisoning in which the evidence suggested that C. perfringens was the causative agent. In the laboratory, enterotoxin production is achieved by inoculating vegetative cells of C. perfringens into a suitable sporulation medium. Methods for the detection and assay of C. perfringens enterotoxin can be divided into one of three groups include biological, serological and tissue culture assays.
