Molecular Identification of Epsilon Toxin-Producing Clostridium perfringens in Stool Samples in Patients with Multiple Sclerosis

  Multiple Sclerosis is a vascular disease in the central nervous system. There is evidence that Clostridium perfringens epsilon toxin causes damage to the myelin of the neuronal cells by increasing the permeability of the blood-brain barrier, and therefore contributes to the disease. Therefore, the aim of this study was the molecular identification of C. perfringens Epsilon toxin in samples isolated from multiple sclerosis patients using multiplex-PCR.

In this descriptive cross-sectional study, 60 stool samples of patients with multiple sclerosis and 60 specimens of healthy individuals were studied. e-toxin producing C. perfringens infection was examined by the M-PCR method after genomic DNA extraction.

  of 60 fecal specimens obtained from patients with multiple sclerosis, 11 (18.3%) and 2 (3.3%) samples were positive for 16S rRNA and ε-toxin-encoding gene, respectively.

The results of this study showed that the prevalence of C. perfringens toxigenic strains in MS patients are higher than in the control group, which can indicate the association between the presence of this toxin and MS disease.