Contamination of honey products by Clostridium botulinum spores and fungi along with their effects on human health

Document Type : Reviewers

Authors

1 Department of Cardiology, School of Medicine, Shahid Madani Hospital, Lorestan University of Medical Sciences, Khorramabad, Iran

2 Catholic University of Cuenca, Azogues campus, Ecuador, University of Palermo, Buenos Aires, Argentina & National University of Education, Azogues, Ecuador; CES University, Colombia

3 Department of Nursing, Altoosi University College, Najaf, Iraq

4 Refrigeration & Air-conditioning Technical Engineering Department, College of Technical Engineering, The Islamic University, Najaf, Iraq

5 Experiential Learning Center Lead, Department of Nursing, University of Calgary in Qatar, Doha, Qatar

6 Department of Biomedical Engineering, Al-Mustaqbal University College, Babylon, Iraq

7 Department of Chemistry, College of Science, University of Babylon, Babylon, Iraq

8 Department of Food Hygiene and Safety, School of Public Health, Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences, Yazd, Iran

9 Department of Food Hygiene and Quality Control, Faculty of Veterinary, Shahrekord University, Shahrekord, Iran

10 Department of Environmental Health, Food Safety Division, Faculty of Public Health, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

10.22124/cjes.2022.6095

Abstract

Bee products, such as honey, are widely consumed as food and medicine. Because of its sticky nature, honey does absorb bacterial spores from dust or bee activity, and their contamination may carry serious health hazards. Databases searched to obtain articles included “Google Scholar”, “SID”, “Scopus”, “PubMed”, “Science Direct”, and “ISI”. Keywords used in this study included Clostridium botulinum, Honey, bees, fungi in their titles. This study focused on published articles from 2016 to 2022. Result showed that this product may contain a great variety of bacteria and particularly, fungi that eventually entered the food chain at an early stage (e.g., via pollen). The ranges of samples with C. botulinum, yeast and mould infections were 0.5% - 68%, 15.78% - 100% and 17.22 - 100%, respectively. Overall, the amount of honey contaminated with Cl. botulinum spores, yeast, and molds in some of the samples that were evaluated was nil, however certain samples from the Lithuanian Kazakh, Turkey, and Brazil regions exhibited varying levels of contamination.

Keywords


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