Pathogens boosted by food additive

Ballard, Jimmy D.

doi:10.1038/d41586-017-08775-4

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21 December 2017

Pathogens boosted by food additive

Epidemic strains of the bacterium Clostridium difficile have now been found to grow on unusually low levels of the food additive trehalose, providing a possible explanation for C. difficile outbreaks since 2001.

Jimmy D. Ballard⁰

Jimmy D. Ballard
1. Jimmy D. Ballard is in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73190, USA.
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Between 2001 and 2006, epidemic strains of the bacterium Clostridium difficile, which can inhabit the bowel and cause dangerous diarrhoea, unexpectedly emerged in the United States, Canada and several European countries¹^,². Most of these strains originated from a single lineage of C. difficile known as ribotype 027 (RT027²), which has now spread around the world³. Of particular concern has been the correlation between RT027 and a dramatic increase in deaths related to C. difficile⁴. The mystery of why this ribotype and a second one, RT078, became so prevalent apparently out of thin air has remained largely unsolved⁵. On page 291, Collins et al.⁶ raise the possibility that the seemingly harmless addition of a sugar called trehalose to the food supply contributed to this disease epidemic.

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Nature 553, 285-286 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-017-08775-4

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