Utilidad de la espectroscopia infrarroja con transformada de Fourier (IRTF) para detectar larvas musculares de Trichinella spiralis (Owen, 1835) en jamón y salchichas hechas de carne de un cerdo infectado experimentalmente

The aim of this work was to determine the usefulness of Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy to detect muscle larvae of Trichinella spiralis (Owen, 1835) in ham and sausages made from the meat of an experimentally infected pig. It was searched for the muscle larvae (ML) by conventional methods (artificial digestion and trichinoscopy stained with Mayer´s hemalum stain) and by FTIR spectroscopy. In addition, the infective capacity of the larvae found in swine products was analyzed. The parasite load was 8.5 ± 3 mL/g in ham and 4.5 ± 1.4 mL/g in sausage (P<0.0001). The spectra of the pig products prepared with the meat of an uninfected pig were different in the range of 1,700 to 900 cm-1 with respect to the spectra of the products from infected pigs. In this region, glycogen is the most abundant chemical group (1,200 and 900 cm-1). The distance between classes between non-infested and infested products was 10.2 for ham and 5.52 for sausages (three is the minimum value to indicate class separation). The infective capacity of the larvae recovered from pig products decreased up to five times compared to that of the larvae obtained from experimentally infected mice. These results show that the FTIR spectroscopy is useful to determine the presence of T. spiralis larvae in the foods studied here. Further studies are needed to determine the influence of meat flavors on the detection of Trichinella by FTIR spectroscopy.