Untersuchungen zum Vorkommen von Salmonella Saintpaul und Campylobacter spp. bei Nutzgeflügelbeständen und weiterführende Untersuchungen der gefundenen Isolate

"Investigations on the occurence of Salmonella Saintpaul and Campylobacter spp. in poultry stocks and further investigations of the detected isolates"

The aim of this study was the evaluation of the samples, which were sent to the Institut für Geflügelkrankheiten of the Freie Universität Berlin from 2008 – 2011 because of statutory Salmonella investigation of poultry flocks. Further investigations were done with isolated Salmonella Saintpaul, which are one of the most often isolated serovars in turkeys. In 2013, S. Saintpaul has been the most often isolated serovar in fattening turkeys in the EU.
Also in this study, it was the most often isolated serovar in fattening turkeys from 2008 to 2010. In 2011 it was at 4th place after S. Infantis, S. Coeln and S. Typhimurium. S. Saintpaul can be a human pathogen and is frequently isolated from poultry meat samples, which is why we took a closer look at this serovar.
For further discrimation of the isolates a pulsed-field-gel-electrophoresis (PFGE) protocol was established. A total of 74 S. Saintpaul isolates were examined by PFGE, of which 67 isoaltes originated from fattening turkeys and seven from laying hens. Moreover 62 of the 74 isolates were tested for antimicrobial resistance. The resistance profiles were also used for discrimination. They widely matched with manual and computer analysis of the PFGE patterns.
Isolates matched from 35 – 100%, at which matching was higher the shorter the time between the sampling periods was.. Furthermore, there was a very high matching inbetween isolates from day-old-chicks over a timespan of four weeks, which were isolated from several flocks in Germany. This is most likely linked to the same origin of the chicks from the same breeder herds or via horizontal transmission at the hatchery. Unfortunately, the origin of the chicks in this study was unknown. We also found a very high match of isolates from day-oldchicks and laying hens. This indicates a common source of infection (i.e. wild birds, trucks, flock visitors, feed, etc.), what will not be solved without further investigation.
Another aim of this study was the attempt to isolate Campylobacter spp. from the samples sent to us due to statutory Salmonella investigation of poultry stocks. Till now there is no statutory provision for diagnosis of Campylobacter spp. in poultry stocks so we further investigated the method used in this study by other procedures.
First we performed isolation like in ISO 10727/2006 described, but instead of 10 ml of the Salmonella-preenrichement we only used 1 ml to not disturb the Salmonella diagnostics. We only found a prevalence of 18,1% in fattening turkeys and 9,4% in chickens. In fattening turkeys considerably more C. jejuni than C. coli were isolated, whereas in laying hens, it was more C. coli. This correlates to what was reported in the published literature. The very low prevalence instead contradicts the literature, why the isolation method was further checked.
Therefore we established a qantitative multiplex Realtime-Polymerase chain reaction (Multiplex qPCR). We investigated retained samples of the Salmonella preenrichement for the existence of Campylobacter-DNA. Here in 58,9% of the turkey samples and 96,3% of the laying hen samples Campylobacter-DNA was found. This is correlates to the literature.
It was noticed that the isolation results were worse the warmer the outside temperature had been. So we conducted storage trials to simulate the usual postal transportation of the Salmonella samples. Therefore, in the first trial we stored two different types of boot swabs for 30 Minutes, one day, two days, three days, four days and five days at different temperatures. Those swabs were scaled right after sampling and before testing to determine the weight loss. This weight loss was equalized with fluid loss. The weight loss unsurprisingly was higher the warmer the outside temperatures had been. We took a second standardized trial where we contaminated fecal samples of a negative laying hen flock with Campylobacter colonies and put the same amount of feces we found in trial one on the boot swabs. The swabs were again stored and investigated like in trial one.
The trials showed that the postal transportation is really disadvantageous for the isolation of Campylobacter spp. because of the oxidative stress for the bacteria, especially at high outside temperatures. A cooled transport to the laboratory is mandatory. If the cooling chain can be maintained the transportation can also endure longer than one day without compromising the isolation outcome.
Overall the isolation of Campylobacter spp. from the sent samples is not suitable for routine diagnostics. The Multiplex qPCR could be a reasonable alternative because of the rapidness of the method and the very low detection limit of Campylobacter-DNA. In addition in this study we further discriminated 54 C. jejuni isolates via sequencing of the Short Variable Region of the Flagellin A Gene (flaA-SVR). This showed a host specific as well as geographic relatedness. There was no time related relation.