Prevalence of Escherichia coli O157: H7 in foods in the MENA region between years 2000 and 2022: a review

Abstract

Escherichia coli O157:H7 is a pathogen associated with severe diarrhoeal diseases that lead to hemorrhagic colitis, hemolytic uremic syndrome, and death, especially in immunocompromised patients. The source of this bacterium is mainly beef cattle in which the pathogen seeps into the food chain from improper hygienic practices either during the slaughtering of the animal or during the after-processing. In addition, this pathogen gets introduced into other parts of the food chain such as vegetables and fruits, as well as dairy products. This document presents the first review of articles published on the prevalence of E. coli O157:H7 in foods in the MENA region in the last 20 years. Indeed E. coli O157:H7 was isolated from many foods of plant and animal origin. The presence of E. coli O157:H7 in meat products necessities good cooking procedures for these products to eliminate the pathogen and prevent foodborne illnesses. In addition, the presence of the pathogen in fruits and vegetables which are consumed mainly without cooking indicates a high risk of E. coli O157:H7 foodborne outbreaks. Thus, estimating the prevalence of this pathogen in these types of food will certainly help health authorities impose good agricultural and manufacturing practices to minimize the risk of such outbreaks. In this review, Google scholar and PubMed were used as the main search engines for our literature search using the following key words: Prevalence—E. coli O157:H7—Food—MENA—Meat—Chicken—Dairy products—Beef etc. and the names of the countries included in the MENA region were used as keywords.

Keywords:

• Chicken
• contamination
• dairy products
• E. coli
• fruits
• meat
• MENA
• milk
• O157:H7
• prevalence
• vegetables

Acknowledgments;

The authors would like to Acknowledge Jordan University of Science and Technology for their logistic support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).