Investigation of the prevalence of Campylobacter species and their antibiotic resistance phenotypes among poultry meat samples in 22 regions of Tehran, Iran

Pathogenic species of Campylobacter, in addition to diarrhea and gastrointestinal diseases, could cause debilitating auto-immune and chronic diseases in humans. Investigation of the existence of this bacterium in food sources and clinical samples, and detection of antibiotic resistance could be helpful in the control of its spread and treatment procedures. The aim of this study was to evaluate the frequency and antibiotic resistance of Campylobacter isolates isolated from poultry meat.

In this study, a total of 100 poultry meat samples were collected from 22 districts of Tehran from July 2018 until March 2019. Accordingly, standard enrichment of the collected samples and their culture in selective medium was done. The isolates were characterized biochemically and by polymerase chain reaction for genus and species specific primers for C. jejuni, C. coli, C. upsaliensis, and C. lari. Antimicrobial susceptibility of the isolates to 7 antibiotics were done using E-test and disk diffusion methods. Moreover, resistance to three or greater classes of antibiotics was determined as multiple drug resistance phenotype (MDR) and the results were statistically analyzed using SPSS16 software.

Campylobacter was isolated from 35% of the poultry meat samples. C. jejuni (23%), C. coli (1%), and C. lari (1%) were among the Campylobacter isolates from these samples. Highest resistance phenotype and the lowest ones were detected against tetracycline (62.8%), and ampicillin and clindamycin (17.1%, each one), respectively. The MDR phenotype was detected among 42.8% of the isolates.

Our results showed high level of contamination with Campylobacter in the poultry meat samples which proposed increased risk of the infection with MDR strains among the consumers in Tehran. Further studies on human clinical samples could better determine this correlation.