In conclusion, S. aureus enterotoxic strains with lower caroten- oids content and SE were more easily inactivated by HPP treat- ments. Furthermore, the surviving cells have not lost their capability to produce SE and other factors/characteristics of viru- lence. The results of this study allow to state that SE presence and carotenoids level are some of the distinctive features of each strain that might influence the barotolerance. In fact, these two features
are dependent of the sB factor, which was already recognized to be
responsible for differences in barotolerance between several strains of the same species. As these differences seem to be the result of more than one feature distinctive of each strain, more assays using several distinct strains are necessary in order to confirm the rela- tionship between carotenoid production level and SE gene content.