The Bacillus cereus
emetic toxin
cereulide causes foodborne intoxication, which may occasionally result in severe disease, and even death. To differentially diagnose the
emetic-type of
foodborne disease caused by B. cereus and assess the safety of commercial food, we developed a rapid method to quantitate
cereulide. This method was combined with liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) analysis for the extraction of
cereulide from food using a normal-phase
silica gel cartridge. The limits of detection and quantification were 0.1 and 0.5 ng of
cereulide ml(-1), respectively. Spiked
cereulide was reproducibly recovered with over 67% efficiency from nine diverse foods implicated in
cereulide food poisoning. The recovery rate, reproducibility, and intermediate precision for this single laboratory validation using boiled rice were 87.1%, 4.4%, and 7.0%, respectively. Further, we detected a wide range of
cereulide concentrations in leftover food and vomitus samples from two
emetic foodborne outbreaks. LC-MS/MS analysis correlated closely with those acquired using the HEp-2 cell assay, and quantitated
cereulide from 10 food samples at least five times faster than the bioassay. This new method will provide clinicians with an improved tool for more rapidly and quantitatively determining the presence of
cereulide in food and diagnosing
food poisoning caused by
cereulide.