Toxigenic Corynebacterium ulcerans in raw milk of a cow with acute mastitis: case report and historical review on milk-transmitted diphtheria

The study includes WGS data of a toxigenic C.ulcerans isolate from raw milk, derived from a cow with acute mastitis and comparison data of human samples from the same MLST sequence type. This is the first isolation of a toxigenic C. ulcerans strain from raw milk for decades and the first linked to a cow with acute mastitis outside the UK and Finland. The findings indicate the importance of milk pasteurisation also with respect to avoiding diphtheria transmission