Comparative Analysis of Aerotolerance, Antibiotic Resistance, and Virulence Gene Prevalence in Campylobacter jejuni Isolates from Retail Raw Chicken and Duck Meat in South Korea

Abstract

Human infections with Campylobacter are primarily associated with the consumption of contaminated poultry meat. In this study, we isolated Campylobacter jejuni from retail raw chicken and duck meat in Korea and compared their aerotolerance, antibiotic resistance, and virulence gene prevalence. Whereas C. jejuni isolates from chicken dominantly belonged to multilocus sequence typing (MLST) clonal complex (CC)-21, CC-45 is the common MLST sequence type in duck meat isolates. C. jejuni strains from both chicken and duck meat were highly tolerant to aerobic stress. The prevalence of virulence genes was higher in C. jejuni strains from chicken than those from duck meat. However, antibiotic resistance was higher in duck meat isolates than chicken isolates. Based on the prevalence of virulence genes and antibiotic resistance, fluoroquinolone-resistant C. jejuni strains harboring all tested virulence genes except virB11 were predominant on retail poultry. Fluoroquinolone-resistant C. jejuni strains carrying most virulence genes were more frequently isolated in summer than in winter. The comparative profiling analysis in this study successfully demonstrated that antibiotic-resistant and pathogenic strains of C. jejuni are highly prevalent on retail poultry and that retail duck meat is an important vehicle potentially transmitting C. jejuni to humans in Korea.

Antimicrobial Resistance and Virulence Properties of Campylobacter Spp. Originating from Domestic Geese in Poland

“…In this study, the iam marker was noted in 93% of the isolates from feces and in 85.7% of the isolates from carcasses. Similar results were observed by Kim et al [33], noting this gene in 97.8% of chicken and 88.9% of duck-origin Campylobacter isolates. In contrast to our result, a significantly lower rate of the iam gene was noted in Poland by Wieczorek et al [49] at the level of 26.2% in isolates from poultry feces and 8.9% in isolates from carcasses.…”

“…Additionally, the common use of tetracyclines both in the therapy of human and animal infections is implicated in the increased number of isolates resistant to this antimicrobial agent. High rates of resistance to quinolones and tetracyclines have also been reported previously in Campylobacter isolates from chicken feces and carcasses, as from duck and turkey isolates [33,49,58].…”

“…The low prevalence of the virB11 gene has been previously noted in Poland among Campylobacter isolates originating from chicken feces (0.6%) and carcasses (2.5%) [13]. Additionally, Kim et al [33], in studies on Campylobacter strains isolated from chicken and duck meat, detected a low rate of this marker, respectively, in 7.8% and 6.7% of the isolates. This marker was also identified sporadically in human clinical isolates, and the virB11 mutant can cause significantly less severe symptoms in vivo [48][49][50].…”

“…The common prevalence of Campylobacter both in raw chicken and turkey samples has been demonstrated in different geographical regions at the level of 50.2% and 41.1% in Poland [30], 61.7% and 36% in Iran [31], and 49.9% and 37.5% in Ireland [32]. However, the studies performed by Kim et al [33] and Little et al [34] underlined that duck meat is also an important source that can transmit Campylobacter, noting that 62.3% and 50.7% of samples were contaminated by this pathogen. Simultaneously, our study demonstrated that geese can be implicated in human campylobacteriosis as overall, 83.3% and 52.5% of the cecum and carcasses samples were positive for Campylobacter spp.…”

“…On the other hand, the rate of other markers involved in invasion, including the iam (invasion-associated marker), ciaB (Campylobacter invasive antigen B), and pldA (encoding a phospholipase A) genes, were commonly reported in previously conducted studies. The pldA and ciaB genes have been noted in Campylobacter strains isolated from chicken carcasses at the rate of 63.6% and 67.3% in Brazil [51], as well as in South Korea [33] in chicken isolates (94.4% and 95.6%) and duck isolates (91.1% and 88.9%). These findings are in accordance with our data.…”