Human Disease Associated with Clostridium perfringens Enterotoxin

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Abstract
Clostridium perfringens, which is commonly found in the gastrointestinal tract of animals, including humans, as well as in terrestrial, marine, and aquatic environments, may be the most widely occurring bacterial pathogen (Smith and Williams 1984). Previously known as C. welchii, C. perfringens was first described in 1892 as Bacillus aerogenes capsulatus (Welch and Nuttall 1892). It is responsible for a variety of enteric and fatal enterotoxemic conditions in domestic animals and humans, causing diseases such as equine colitis, necrotic enteritis in poultry, food poisoning, lamb dysentery, and neonatal hemorrhagic or necrotic enterotoxemias (Bartholomew et al. 1985; Bergeland 1981; Collins et al. 1989; Niilo 1993; Songer 1995, 1996). The virulence of the organism is associated with the production of 1 or more of an estimated 17 potential exotoxins (Smith 1979). The production of one or more of the four major toxins (α, β, ∈, or ι) is the basis for the subtyping of the organism into five toxigenic types (Table 1). Although it is not one of the major toxins used in typing, C. perfringens enterotoxin (CPE) is considered a major virulence attribute and is the principal toxin involved in typical C. perfringens food-borne illness (McClane 1992).