The genus Salmonella is an important food and water-borne pathogen around the world. It causes acute gastrointestinal illness. The infective dose can be as low as 15-20 cells. Conventional methods for detection of Salmonella spp. in foods are generally time-consuming and labor-intensive. A real-time PCR method has been developed by FDA, PRL-SW with custom designed primers to amplify a 262-bp fragment of Salmonella-specific invA gene. The system has been tested with 255 strains of field-isolated Salmonella spp. and non-Salmonella spp., as well 312 samples of various food matrices. The results showed that the method had 100 % specificity and high sensitivity (0.1-0.7 CFU/g). This newly developed real-time PCR method is much more rapid, sensitive, and specific for detection of Salmonella spp. than the traditional BAM method and the AOAC-approved VIDAS method.
"collection from 2004 FDA Science Forum"
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