Occurrence of Cronobacter spp. in retail foods.

AIMS: To study the occurrence of Cronobacter spp. in foods and to investigate the phenotypic properties of the strains isolated. METHODS AND RESULTS: A total of 53 strains of Cronobacter spp. isolated from 399 food samples were identified using conventional biochemical methods and MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry. Foods of plant origin were the most frequently contaminated samples. No Cronobacter spp. were found in infant milk formula, wheat-based infant food, pasteurized and raw cow milk, mincemeat, chicken, chickpea and potato dumpling powder. The individual species were identified as Cronobacter sakazakii (54·7%), Cronobacter malonaticus (28·4%), Cronobacter dublinensis (7·5%), Cronobacter muytjensii (7·5%) and Cronobacter turicensis (1·9%). Cronobacter sakazakii and C. malonaticus belong to biotype 1, 2, 2a, 3, 4 and 5, 5a, respectively. Cronobacter dublinensis strains were subdivided into biotypes 6 and 12. All strains were resistant to erythromycin and two of them were resistant to both erythromycin and tetracycline. CONCLUSIONS: Cronobacter spp. were isolated from various food samples pre-eminently of plant origin and dried food ingredients. SIGNIFICANCE AND IMPACT OF THE STUDY: These findings will increase and detail our knowledge of the presence and diversity of Cronobacter spp. in foods.

Quantitative acoustic measurements for characterization of speech and voice disorders in early untreated Parkinson's disease.

An assessment of vocal impairment is presented for separating healthy people from persons with early untreated Parkinson's disease (PD). This study's main purpose was to (a) determine whether voice and speech disorder are present from early stages of PD before starting dopaminergic pharmacotherapy, (b) ascertain the specific characteristics of the PD-related vocal impairment, (c) identify PD-related acoustic signatures for the major part of traditional clinically used measurement methods with respect to their automatic assessment, and (d) design new automatic measurement methods of articulation. The varied speech data were collected from 46 Czech native speakers, 23 with PD. Subsequently, 19 representative measurements were pre-selected, and Wald sequential analysis was then applied to assess the efficiency of each measure and the extent of vocal impairment of each subject. It was found that measurement of the fundamental frequency variations applied to two selected tasks was the best method for separating healthy from PD subjects. On the basis of objective acoustic measures, statistical decision-making theory, and validation from practicing speech therapists, it has been demonstrated that 78% of early untreated PD subjects indicate some form of vocal impairment. The speech defects thus uncovered differ individually in various characteristics including phonation, articulation, and prosody.