Occurrence, Diversity, and Host Association of Intestinal Campylobacter, Arcobacter, and Helicobacter in Reptiles

Abstract

Campylobacter, Arcobacter, and Helicobacter species have been isolated from many vertebrate hosts, including birds, mammals, and reptiles. Multiple studies have focused on the prevalence of these Epsilonproteobacteria genera in avian and mammalian species. However, little focus has been given to the presence within reptiles, and their potential zoonotic and pathogenic roles. In this study, occurrence, diversity, and host association of intestinal Epsilonproteobacteria were determined for a large variety of reptiles. From 2011 to 2013, 444 cloacal swabs and fecal samples originating from 417 predominantly captive-held reptiles were screened for Epsilonproteobacteria. Campylobacter, Arcobacter, and Helicobacter genus specific PCRs were performed directly on all samples. All samples were also cultured on selective media and screened for the presence of Epsilonproteobacteria. Using a tiered approach of AFLP, atpA, and 16S rRNA sequencing, 432 Epsilonproteobacteria isolates were characterized at the species level. Based on PCR, Campylobacter, Arcobacter, and Helicobacter were detected in 69.3% of the reptiles; 82.5% of the chelonians, 63.8% of the lizards, and 58.0% of the snakes were positive for one or more of these genera. Epsilonproteobacteria were isolated from 22.1% of the reptiles and were isolated most frequently from chelonians (37.0%), followed by lizards (19.6%) and snakes (3.0%). The most commonly isolated taxa were Arcobacter butzleri, Arcobacter skirrowii, reptile-associated Campylobacter fetus subsp. testudinum, and a putative novel Campylobacter taxon. Furthermore, a clade of seven related putative novel Helicobacter taxa was isolated from lizards and chelonians. This study shows that reptiles carry various intestinal Epsilonproteobacteria taxa, including several putative novel taxa.

Arcobacter: an emerging food-borne zoonotic pathogen, its public health concerns and advances in diagnosis and control – a comprehensive review

“…Arcobacters have been reported worldwide from chickens, domestic animals (cattle, pigs, sheep, horses, dogs), reptiles (lizards, snakes and chelonians), meat (poultry, pork, goat, lamb, beef, rabbit), vegetables and from humans in different countries like Belgium, United States of America, Denmark, Brazil, Australia, Italy, the Netherlands, Malaysia, Japan, Spain, Czech Republic, Korea, Egypt and India (Lehner et al 2005;Atabay et al 2006;Ho et al 2006a;Snelling et al 2006;Pejchalova et al 2008;Collado et al 2010;Lee et al 2010;Vilar et al 2010;Amare et al 2011;Gonz alez & Ferr us 2011;Patyal 2011;Suelam 2012;Ramees et al 2014aRamees et al , 2014bRamees et al , 2014cMohan et al 2014;Gilbert et al 2014). Arcobacter is a potential food-and water-borne pathogen, and thus pose serious public health concerns (Gonz alez et al 2007b;Gugliandolo et al 2008;Miller et al 2009;Ferreira et al 2016).…”

“…Quinones et al (2007) used DNA oligonucleotide arrays to simultaneously determine the presence of Arcobacter and Campylobacter in retail chicken samples by targeting VAGs. Arcobacter having wide genetic diversity among the species and between the species have been isolated from different sources (Houf et al 2002b;Merga et al 2013;Gilbert et al 2014). Several researchers stated that there is a high level of diversity among A. butzleri isolates obtained from both human and animal sources as detected by micro restriction PFGE (Hume et al 2001;Rivas et al 2004;Gonz alez et al 2007a;Merga et al 2013) and ERIC-PCR (Houf et al 2002b;Van Driessche et al 2005, Van Driessche & Houf 2007aDe Smet et al 2010).…”

“…In another study, isolates of Campylobacter, Arcobacter and Helicobacter from reptiles were compared using AFLP atpA and 16S rRNA sequencing (Gilbert et al 2014). Recently, a rapid, high-throughput, highresolution assay, comparative genomic fingerprinting analysis, has been developed for genotyping of A. butzleri isolates by the use of which reproducible subtyping of these organisms is possible (Webb et al 2015).…”

Arcobacter

“…Reptiles have also recently been shown to carry Campylobacteracea, including Arcobacter. Lacertilia (lizards), Serpentes (snakes) and Testudines (chelonians) have all been shown to carry the human-associated species A. butzleri, A. cryaerophilus and A. skirrowii (Gilbert et al, 2014). These animals, like dogs, are often kept as companion animals and fecal-oral transmission is possible if proper hygiene is not followed after handling.…”

PHYLOGENETIC ANALYSIS OF Arcobacter butzleri AND Arcobacter skirrowii ISOLATES AND THEIR DETECTION FROM CONTAMINATED VEGETABLES BY MULTIPLEX PCR

“…Various other nucleic acid-based methods have been used for detection, identification and monitoring of Arcobacters in food including PCR-plus-RFLP (Neubauer et al, 2003), PCR-plus-RAPD (Atabay et al, 2002;Houf et al, 2002), and PCR-plus DNA sequencing (Karenlampi et al, 2004). The 16S rRNA sequencing is more accurate which also indicates similarity of Arcobacter and the Epsilon proteobacteria genus (Gilbert et al, 2014).…”