Approach to Epidemiological Mechanism of Infection or Colonization of Egg-Laying Chicken Farms by Salmonella enterica Serovar Enteritidis (SE) Becoming the Main Source of Contamination in Food Poisoning (Review)

Salmonella enterica serovar Enteritidis (SE)-induced diarrhea in humans is the typical non-typhoid diarrhea. It develops acutely or subacutely and may be fatal. This SE infectious disease suddenly became a major public health issue worldwide in the 1980s. The main causative food material of SE food poisoning is chicken eggs, and many outbreaks of food poisoning caused by chicken eggs occurred throughout the world. SE epidemics occurred in layer farms, and this was the main cause of SE-induced food poisoning in humans. The major subject of our epidemiological study described in this report is why SE-contaminated eggs became the main causative food. In this study, we focused on difference of molecular expression for farm-isolated SEs. That is because recent studies have demonstrated that O-antigen enlargement may be related to pathogenicity in mice as well as 22-kDa polypeptide-expression (SEp22). We have discovered that many SE strains isolated from chicken farms do not express SEp22, and a deficiency or decreased level of cellular antigen 0-12 in SE strains isolated from chicken farms was clarified in a report. Additionally, SEp22 was deficient in SE strains passaged through chickens, whereas SEp22 was expressed at a high level in SE strains passaged through mice. These findings suggest that SE infection and retention more effectively occur in layer farms than in other animal maintenance environments, which may be a basis of the epidemiological hypothesis to explain the high-levelproduction of SE-contaminated eggs (the presence of mice may be the basis of the retention of SE infection in layer farms, and this may also be the mechanism causing the high-level production of SE-contaminated eggs).