Novel Clonal Complexes with an Unknown Animal Reservoir Dominate Campylobacter jejuni Isolates from River Water in New Zealand

Abstract

Campylobacter jejuni is widely distributed in the environment, and river water has been shown to carry high levels of the organism. In this study, 244 C. jejuni isolates from three river catchment areas in New Zealand were characterized using multilocus sequence typing. Forty-nine of the 88 sequence types identified were new. The most common sequence types identified were ST-2381 (30 isolates), ST-45 (25 isolates), and ST-1225 (23 isolates). The majority of the sequence types identified in the river water could be attributed to wild bird fecal contamination. Two novel clonal complexes (CC) were identified, namely, CC ST-2381 (11 sequence types, 46 isolates) and CC ST-3640 (6 sequence types, 12 isolates), in which all of the sequence types were new. CC ST-2381 was the largest complex identified among the isolates and was present in two of the three rivers. None of the sequence types associated with the novel complexes has been identified among human isolates. The ST-2381 complex is not related to complexes associated with cattle, sheep, or poultry. The source of the novel complexes has yet to be identified.

Global Epidemiology of Campylobacter Infection

“…Furthermore, it has been reported that cattle were more likely to test positive for Campylobacter following an outdoor grazing period in spring, when the water supply was lake water, than when they were confined indoors in winter, when their water supply was municipal chlorinated tap water (376). Other sources implicated in the contamination of outdoor water are wild bird feces and waste runoff from contaminated domesticated animals (377).…”

Campylobacter sequence typing databases: applications and future prospects

“…Examples include: (i) the ST-45 and ST-257 clonal complexes, which are common amongst poultry in Europe, New Zealand and, to a lesser extent, Senegal de Haan et al, 2010a;Griekspoor et al, 2010;Habib et al, 2009a;Jorgensen et al, 2011;Kinana et al, 2006;Magnú sson et al, 2011;McTavish et al, 2009;Patriarchi et al, 2011;Wirz et al, 2010); (ii) the ST-61 and ST-42 clonal complexes, which have been found to be common amongst ruminants in This database depends on voluntary submissions and the data are, therefore, neither necessarily representative nor exhaustive; however, they do indicate that different clonal complexes show marked differences in the likelihood of being associated with particular isolation sources. Note that all clonal complexes are C. jejuni, with the exception of the ST-828 clonal complex, which is C. coli.…”

Use of Amplified-Fragment Length Polymorphism To Study the Ecology of Campylobacter jejuni in Environmental Water and To Predict Multilocus Sequence Typing Clonal Complexes

“…The lack of evidence linking CC ST-1224 with other ecological niches makes it difficult to hypothesize a source. The fact that these CCs are unique to the Eastern Townships could probably link them to native fauna that are not seen in other parts of the world (5,8) or that do not interchange with the same species in other regions because they do not migrate. The fact that 69% of the STs in this study are new supports this hypothesis.…”

“…to contaminate environmental water (1,3). The contamination of drinking water by Campylobacter has resulted in a number of well-characterized outbreaks (7, 12, 14-16, 21, 28), highlighting the potential of any water source to act as a transmission route for Campylobacter infection (5).…”