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Clostridium sordellii lethal toxin gene is not detectable by PCR in the intestinal flora of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome cases or infants who died of other causes

¹ SA Pathology at the Women's and Childrens Hospital;

² The University of Adelaide

³ E-mail: amanda.highet{at}adelaide.edu.au

Received July 21, 2009
Accepted October 19, 2009

Infection caused by Clostridium sordellii translocated from the gastrointestinal tract has been reported to cause septic shock, often resulting in fatality. The organism's major virulence factor, lethal toxin (LT), is responsible for fatal outcome after C. sordellii infection. We designed an experiment to explore the possibility of C. sordellii colonising the intestinal tract contributing to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, possibly via a fatal toxaemia. The feasibility of the methodology was demonstrated using a spiked culture of intestinal contents. Cultures grown from intestinal contents of fifty infants meeting the 1991 definition of SIDS, and thirteen cases of non-SIDS death were tested for the LT gene by PCR. None of the SIDS or non-SIDS infant samples tested positive for LT. The results of this investigation suggest that intestinal colonization by LT toxigenic C. sordellii is unlikely to contribute to SIDS. However, based on these results alone we cannot completely exclude the role of C. sordellii bacteraemia or toxaemia in SIDS.