Chicken meat is an infection source of Salmonella serovar Infantis for humans in Japan.
BACKGROUND
The study sets out to either confirm or refute a recent study's findings that chicken meat is an unlikely source of Salmonella enterica subspecies enterica serovar Infantis (Salmonella Infantis) in humans in the Kyushu-Okinawa region, Japan.


METHODS
A total of 74 Salmonella Infantis isolates (30 from human and 44 from other sources), mainly from the Kyushu-Okinawa region in south-western Japan, were analyzed using a molecular-epidemiological approach combining two fingerprinting methods, namely pulsed-field gel electrophoresis and amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP), a novel polymerase chain reaction-based technique.


RESULTS
The resulting pulsed-field profiles showed that 17 of 30 human isolates were similar to those found in chicken meat, whereas there were no common pulsed-field profiles between human and chicken egg isolates. Overall, 3 of 18 AFLP profiles included 7 human isolates and 14 chicken egg isolates. In addition, the combined results of the pulsed-field gel electrophoresis and AFLP analyses showed that 8 human Salmonella Infantis and 13 chicken meat isolates belonged to the same clonal lines.


CONCLUSIONS
These results suggest that chicken meat is an infection source of Salmonella Infantis for humans in the Kyushu-Okinawa region, Japan. The results also showed the relatively high suitability of AFLP for application to epidemiological studies of Salmonella Infantis.
Division of Pathology and Bacteriology, Fukuoka Institute of Health and Environmental Sciences, Dazaifu, Japan. noda-t8031@pref.fukuoka.lg.jp
Tamie
T
Noda
Koichi
K
Murakami
Yasuhisa
Y
Ishiguro
Tetsuo
T
Asai
D054458:Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism Analysis; D000818:Animals; D000829:Animals, Domestic / Q000382:microbiology; D002645:Chickens / Q000382:microbiology*; D004269:DNA, Bacterial / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification; D004531:Eggs / Q000382:microbiology; D016521:Electrophoresis, Gel, Pulsed-Field; D005516:Food Microbiology; D006801:Humans; D007564:Japan / Q000453:epidemiology; D008460:Meat / Q000382:microbiology*; D017720:Molecular Epidemiology; D012478:Salmonella Food Poisoning / Q000517:prevention & control; D012480:Salmonella Infections / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000382:microbiology; D019779:Salmonella enterica / Q000235:genetics* / Q000302:isolation & purification
D004269:DNA, Bacterial