Isolation, Epidemiological and Molecular Characterization of Campylobacter from Meat

Abstract

Study conducted to know epidemiology and accomplish molecular characterization of Campylobacter isolated from meat of different species and human stool samples. A total of 759 samples, consisting of human stool (50) and meat of poultry (251), chevon (183), pork (127), fish (106) as well as carabeef (42) were processed, 50 samples showed characteristic colonies on mCCDA plates. All the 50 isolates were subjected to various biochemical tests and Latex agglutination test for confirmation of the genus Campylobacter. All the isolates were further analysed for molecular confirmation and PCR based genus specific amplification of 16S rRNA gene which yielded product of 816 bp in all the isolates. Multiplex PCR was performed for genus as well as species-level identification; all 50 isolates revealed 857 bp amplicon of 16S rRNA gene specific for genus Campylobacter. Thirty-five isolates exhibited 589 mapA gene amplicon specific for C. jejuni and 16 isolates gave 462 amplification product of ceuE gene specific for C. coli. Overall prevalence was 6.58%. The highest prevalence rate of 13.54% was recorded in poultry meat, followed by 7.6% in chevon, 0.78% in pork and 2% from human stool samples. None of the isolates were recovered from beef and fish meat samples. Most of the obtained isolates were classified as C. jejuni (35 strains, 70%), whereas C. coli was identified in 15 (30%) samples, indicating that the C. jejuni was the most commonly found species.