ena-STUDY-UL-BF-07-11-2013-07:58:21:530-127
Diversity of GyrA gene of Campylobacter jejuni
Campylobacter is the most prevalent cause of bacterial gastroenteritis worldwide and it represents a significant public health risk, severity of which is becoming even higher due to its increasing resistance to clinically important quinolone and macrolide antibiotics. As a zoonotic pathogen Campylobacter is transmitted along the food chain and naturally cycles from environmental waters, feedstuff, animals and food to humans. We have determined antibiotic resistance profiles, as well as MLST and flaA-SVR types for 53 C. jejuni isolated in Slovenia from human, animal, raw and cured chicken meat and water samples. Twenty-nine different sequence types, arranged in eleven clonal complexes, three new allele types and five new sequence types were identified, indicating the relatively high diversity among a small group of strains. The assignment of strains from different sources to the same clonal complexes indicates their transmittance along the food supply chain. The most prevalent clonal complex (CC) among isolates was ST-21, which was also the genetic group with 95% of quinolone resistant strains. Based on the genetic relatedness of these quinolone resistant strains found with MAMA PCR and gyrA QRDR sequencing, we can conclude that high resistance prevalence observed in our study indicates the local clonal spreading of quinolone resistance with the CC ST-21.
Campylobacter is the most prevalent cause of bacterial gastroenteritis worldwide and it represents a significant public health risk, severity of which is becoming even higher due to its increasing resistance to clinically important quinolone and macrolide antibiotics. As a zoonotic pathogen Campylobacter is transmitted along the food chain and naturally cycles from environmental waters, feedstuff, animals and food to humans. We have determined antibiotic resistance profiles, as well as MLST and flaA-SVR types for 53 C. jejuni isolated in Slovenia from human, animal, raw and cured chicken meat and water samples. Twenty-nine different sequence types, arranged in eleven clonal complexes, three new allele types and five new sequence types were identified, indicating the relatively high diversity among a small group of strains. The assignment of strains from different sources to the same clonal complexes indicates their transmittance along the food supply chain. The most prevalent clonal complex (CC) among isolates was ST-21, which was also the genetic group with 95% of quinolone resistant strains. Based on the genetic relatedness of these quinolone resistant strains found with MAMA PCR and gyrA QRDR sequencing, we can conclude that high resistance prevalence observed in our study indicates the local clonal spreading of quinolone resistance with the CC ST-21.