Assessment of several detection and cultive protocols: Detection of Campylobacter from different matrices
María Ugarte Ruiz defended this presentation at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of the Complutense University of Madrid in order to obtain the Master of Research
September 27th, 2010
Campylobacter spp., and especially C. jejuni and C. coli, are Gram-negative pathogens of primary importance, as campylobacteriosis remains to be the most frequently reported zoonotic disease in humans in the European Union. This fact highlights the control of Campylobacter throughout the food chain as one of the main objectives to be achieved by the Food Safety Agencies at European level.
Campylobacter is a, microaerophilic bacillus, highly motile, of slow growth rate and with an optimal culture growth temperature of about 37-42ºC. These characteristics hinder its isolation, so it is considered to be a “fastidious organism”.
In this study different protocols of detection are evaluated, including microbiological and molecular (qPCR) ones, for both Campylobacter jejuni and Campylobacter coli. The guideline for the microbiological isolation is ISO 10272-1:2006, being the standardized method for foodborne products. Nevertheless, matrices such as animal intestines or environmental samples are disregarded by ISO normative while several methodologies have been described for them.
In our study we assess the efficiency of the different proposed methods, independently of the nature of the sample, in order to improve the isolation and detection of this microorganism at the laboratory.
