Improved Culturing Techniques for Campylobacter

Abstract

Improved techniques for culturing and enumerating Campylobacter jejuni were developed. Parameters included (1) growth vessel type, (2) growth atmosphere, (3) incubation time, and (4) frequency of subculturing. Improved growth and consistent morphology were obtained using a tissue culture flask compared with an Erlenmeyer flask or a test tube as well as exposure to modified atmosphere (10% CO 2 , 85% N 2 , and 5% O 2 ). When cultures of C. jejuni were incubated more than 24 h, transformation to the coccoid increased, and fewer colony-forming units were detected. Excessive subculturing (>2 times) resulted in increased formation of coccoid forms. Decreased concentrations of colony-forming units of C. jejuni commonly attributed to the production of a viable, nonculturable form also may be due to cellular clumping. These techniques should alleviate difficulty and reduce variation when working with Campylobacter.

Activity of wine against Campylobacter jejuni

“…The initial source in human infections is largely caused by direct or indirect contamination from faecal or intestinal material of food animals. The main initial source of contamination is poultry products (Hirsh, 1999a;Koenig, 2005), the infection occurring after food has been improperly cooked or contaminated (or re-contaminated) after any cooking stage (Koenig, 2005;Reilly & Gilliland, 2003). However, some occurrences are associated with raw milk (Hirsh, 1999b;Reilly & Gilliland, 2003) and contaminated water supplies (Hirsh, 1999b;Koenig, 2005;Reilly & Gilliland, 2003).…”

“…Although any person can be affected (Beumer, de Vries, & Rombouts, 1992;Roberts et al, 1998), the symptoms are normally more serious in children, elderly people and persons with underlying health problems (Roberts et al, 1998;(www.health.vic.gov.av, 2000)) Campylobacter spp. is part of the intestinal flora of several animals (Carter et al, 1995;Reilly & Gilliland, 2003;Tortora et al, 2002). The initial source in human infections is largely caused by direct or indirect contamination from faecal or intestinal material of food animals.…”

“…causes campylobacteriosis, a gastro-intestinal tract infection (Carter, Chengappa, & Roberts, 1995;Reilly & Gilliland, 2003;Roberts, BairdParker, & Tompkin, 1998) characterised by severe diarrhoea, fever, abdominal pains, nausea and vomiting that usually lasts for five to seven days (Koenig, 2005;Tortora, Funke, & Case, 2002). The principal species responsible for the majority of infections is Campylobacter jejuni (Roberts et al, 1998;Tortora et al, 2002).…”

“…The main initial source of contamination is poultry products (Hirsh, 1999a;Koenig, 2005), the infection occurring after food has been improperly cooked or contaminated (or re-contaminated) after any cooking stage (Koenig, 2005;Reilly & Gilliland, 2003). However, some occurrences are associated with raw milk (Hirsh, 1999b;Reilly & Gilliland, 2003) and contaminated water supplies (Hirsh, 1999b;Koenig, 2005;Reilly & Gilliland, 2003). Contamination by domestic animals (Hirsh, 1999a;Koenig, 2005) or person-to-person, are also sources of dissemination of the illness (www.health.vic.gov.av, 2000).…”

Influence of measurement and control of microaerobic gaseous atmospheres in methods for Campylobacter growth studies

“…A comparison of three gas generating systems (GRJ, CGP and plastic bags used as plate container and filled with premixed microaerobic gas) for growing C. jejuni on agar plates, revealed that while these three methods provided no significant differences for culturable cells, the size of the colonies on plates using GRJ were significantly smaller than those obtained from the two other methods (Haines et al, 2011). It was also mentioned that the helical shape of the cells was maintained in vented tissue culture flasks incubated under microaerobic atmosphere (Reilly and Gilliland, 2003).…”