A Comprehensive Review on Molecular Characteristics and Food-Borne Outbreaks of Listeria monocytogenes

Listeria monocytogenes is an important foodborne pathogen which causes serious invasive illness, and affects mostly elderly and immune-compromised people, pregnant women, newborns and infants leading to listeriosis. L. monocytogenes can cause vast outbreaks due to consumption of contaminated food products, and has a significant role in public health. The pathogen has been isolated from food, human and animal samples world-wide. Neonatal listeriosis is most commonly reported incase of humans, where as in animal populations, spontaneous abortions, meningoencephalitis and endometritis are the most common. The purpose of this review is to enumerate Listeria epidemiology world-wide by using publicly available data from CDC, FDA and ProMED and by describing the details such as countries involved, source, suspected and confirmed case counts etc. to understand its public health importance. This review also offers a description of bacteriological characteristics, taxonomy, virulence determinants, typing methods, a detailed account of listeriosis in human and in animals and an up-to-date information of the recent outbreaks of L. monocytogenes. We specifically aimed at the prevalence and epidemiology of L. monocytogenes globally, since it is a major food-borne pathogen and is the third leading cause of death due to food poisoning. This review paper provides information on L. monocytogenes to understand the better management of the infection, the source of infection and route of transmission of the disease. Most of the listeriosis cases were linked with the consumption of contaminated food and it is important to identify the type of food materials to mitigate the risk of Listeriosis in the high-risk populations.