Associates of enteric bacteria with aquarium snail

Associates of enteric bacteria with aquarium snail

It is important to note that the aquarium snail contains bacteria that can cause infections to man when the snail meat is not properly cooked and when the processing is not done under sanitized

condition (Fagbuaro et al., 2006). Aquarium snails are found majorly in southern parts of Nigeria, North African coast area, Central and South Africa where the weather is most favourable for their proliferation (Herbert et al., 2001). It has been observed that edible snails obtained from swamps in North African coast for consumption in North America carry with them Salmonella species (Andrews et al., 1975).  Many kinds of aquatic snails make excellent additions to an aquarium.

Aetiology of human bacterial infections from the consumption of snails.

Pathogenic and potentially pathogenic and enteric bacteria associated with aquarium snail include Staphylococcus auerus, Escherichia coli, Klebsiella species and Aeromonas species, vibro species, pseudomonas species and others (Chattopadhyay, 2000). People most often get infected as follows (Acha and Szyfres, 2003): 

• Through contact with infected aquarium snails while handling them, water or other constituents of snail  life environment; the following cases of trans- missions have been recorded so far: after injury by cleaning aquarium with bare hands (Alinovi, 1993), after exposure to snail tank water (Kern, 1989), by handling tropical snail ponds (Guarda, 1992), by contact with rare tropical snail (Bhay, 2000), by contact with a fresh- or salt-water environment (Hayman, 1991; Jernigan and Farr, 2000), infection of young children who are in contact with a snail (Bleiker, 1996; Speight and Williams, 1997), through processing snail in the food industry and preparation of dishes (Notermans and Hoornstra, 2000) or
• Orally by consumption infected snail or related products or food contaminated with water or other constituents of water environment. Apart from factors relating to the living environment (exposure), the development of an infectious disease is markedly affected by internal factors such as the physiological status of consumer, particularly by immune suppression and stress as in the case of HIV/AIDS (Von Reyn, 1996).
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