Genes coding for virulence determinants of Campylobacter jejuni isolates from human and poultry.

Abstract

Campylobacter jejuni is the leading cause of bacterial food-borne diarrhoeal disease throughout the world. Campylobacteriosis is a zoonosis that transmitted to humans from poultry or meat contaminated by Campylobacter spp.  Despite of its high incidence in Thailand, there have been regarding the pathogenicity mechanisms and virulence genes of  C. jejuni from Thailand. It has evolved increasing resistance to fluoroquinolones in Thailand. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of different pathogenic genes and compare the frequency of genes detection between human and poultry isolates of C. jejuni from stool samples in Thailand. Moreover, the correlation of these genes and the resistance of ciprofloxacin and/or doxycycline was investigated. A total of 52 samples from human and poultry were screened for the presence of 15 pathogenic genes namely cgtB, CjcdtA, CjcdtB, CjcdtC, ciaB, pldA, fucP, virB11, flaA, racR, dnaJ, ceuE, cadF, ggt and ansB. All isolates carried CjcdtA, CjcdtB, CjcdtC, ciaB,  flaA, racR, dnaJ and ceuE. Determination of Minimal Inhibitory Concentration (MIC) of ciprofloxacin and doxycycline by Epsilometer test (E-test) revealed that 87% and 40% of them were resistance to ciprofloxacin and doxycycline respectively. In addition, the pearson’s chi-square test analysis showed association between cgtB gene and doxycycline intermediate resistance (p-value <0.05).