Detection of staphylococcal enterotoxin B (SEB) by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and by a rapid hand-held assay.

Staphylococcal enterotoxins are a frequent cause of food poisoning. Immunologically-based assays for the detection of staphylococcal enterotoxins are commercially available, but require at minimum of 3 hours. We used staphylococcal enterotoxin B to compare two commercially available assays with a newly developed rapid immunochromatographic-based hand-held assay. The detection limit of the commercially available assays accounted for 500 pg and 100 pg enterotoxin B/ml, respectively, whereas 50 pg enterotoxin B /ml were detected within 15 min using the hand-held assay. Enterotoxin B-spiked custard served as a model to detect staphylococcal enterotoxin in food. Depending on the extraction method applied, the detection limit was in the range of 500 pg to 2500 pg/g custard for the commercially available assays and 62.5 pg/g for the hand-held assay. We conclude that the hand-held assay is widely applicable because it is sensitive, specific with regard to the tested enterotoxins, and the results can be read with the naked eye.