Campylobacter is well recognized as the leading cause of bacterial foodborne diarrheal disease worldwide. The infection may be subclinical or cause disease of variable severity. The eating and handling of improperly cooked or raw broiler meat has been shown to be one of the most important sources of human campylobacteriosis. Birds carrying Campylobacter are asymptomatic colonizers without any clinical signs. Broilers are considered Campylobacter free after hatching and become colonized by exposure to viable bacteria from the environment. Several risk factors can result in the introduction of Campylobacter into the flocks making it difficult to keep chicken flocks free of Campylobacter throughout the rearing period. Lack of biosecurity measures, season, age, partial depopulation practices, flock size, type of production system, presence of other animals on farm, water quality, presence of rodents and mechanical transmission via insects are considered to be some of the risk factors associated with horizontal transmission. The control of Campylobacter in poultry seems crucial for the reduction of human campylobacteriosis cases. In Greece, there has been a dearth of information on prevalence and risk factors of Campylobacter in broiler flocks. Therefore, it is essential to initially investigate the prevalence of Campylobacter infection on farms and in poultry carcasses and subsequently the risk factors at all production stages of broiler meat and plan intervention studies to help reducing the disease in humans. This paper review the most recent data reported worldwide on Campylobacter infection in humans and poultry in order to provide an overview of trends, risks, possible causes and mechanisms of transmission routes.

Campylobacter is well recognized as the leading cause of bacterial foodborne diarrheal disease worldwide; while, poultry has been identified as a significant cause of campylobacter infection in humans. The C. jejuni has been found to be the predominant species isolated from poultry samples and, yet, responsible for the majority of human campylobacteriosis. Campylobacter spp. are small, oxidase positive, microaerophilic, curved gram-negative rods exhibiting corkscrew motility and colonize the intestinal tract of most mammalian and avian species. From its very first description in late 19th century by Theodor Escherich until nowadays, a lot of research has been carried out providing a wealth of information regarding its microbiological properties. Since novel technologies constantly emerge, increasingly advanced methods for detection, identification and typing of Campylobacter spp. are becoming available. The aim of this article is to review the recent bibliography on Campylobacter focusing, especially, on its survival and growth characteristics, the laboratory methods used for its detection and isolation from clinical, animal, environmental, and food samples, the reported methods applied for its speciation, as well as the typing systems developed for subtyping of Campylobacter.

Human campylobacteriosis caused by thermophilic Campylobacter species is the most commonly reported foodborne zoonosis. Consumption of contaminated poultry meat is regarded as the main source of human infection. This study was undertaken to determine the antimicrobial susceptibility and the molecular epidemiology of 205 Campylobacter isolates derived from Greek flocks slaughtered in three different slaughterhouses over a 14-month period. A total of 98.5% of the isolates were resistant to at least one antimicrobial agent. In terms of multidrug resistance, 11.7% of isolates were resistant to three or more groups of antimicrobials. Extremely high resistance to fluoroquinolones (89%), very high resistance to tetracycline (69%), and low resistance to macrolides (7%) were detected. FlaA sequencing was performed for the subtyping of 64 C. jejuni and 58 C. coli isolates. No prevalence of a specific flaA type was observed, indicating the genetic diversity of the isolates, while some flaA types were found to share similar antimicrobial resistance patterns. Phylogenetic trees were constructed using the neighbor-joining method. Seven clusters of the C. jejuni phylogenetic tree and three clusters of the C. coli tree were considered significant with bootstrap values >75%. Some isolates clustered together were originated from the same or adjacent farms, indicating transmission via personnel or shared equipment. These results are important and help further the understanding of the molecular epidemiology and antimicrobial resistance of Campylobacter spp. derived from poultry in Greece.

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