Staphylococus Aureus em alimentos como problema de saúde pública: uma revisão

Abstract

Food poisoning caused by Staphylococcus aureus results from the consumption of foods containing enterotoxins preformed by this pathogen. Although this disease is frequent, its incidence is still underestimated. The present work is a literature review whose objective was to gather scientific evidence about the importance of S. aureus for the safety of processed foods. The study sought to compile recent epidemiological data on DTA; present the general characteristics of this microorganism; explain about staphylococcal toxins; address the relationship between the studied pathogen and foods manipulated in food poisoning outbreaks; punctuate the main conditions that favor the occurrence of outbreaks caused by this microorganism; and list possible strategies for its control. Searches were performed for primary articles in the databases AGRIS, OneFile (GALE), DOAJ and Academic Google, using descriptors that conducted the search through the guiding question: What is the importance of Staphylococcus aureus, as a potential public health problem, in food safety? There was also a manual search of some references used by the articles retrieved from the databases. Based on the bibliographical survey, it was observed that this bacterium presents itself as an important public health problem, both because of its vast pathogenic potential and because of the high number of outbreaks recorded worldwide. From this review, the need for further studies on the behavior of enterotoxins in the human body was observed; on the influence of environmental conditions and the food matrix on the production of these enterotoxins; and mainly on the incidence of different enterotoxins in different types of food.