Characteristics of ciprofloxacin resistant Campylobacter spp . isolated from chicken meat in Turkey

Thermophilic Campylobacter spp. are small, curved or spiral-shaped and Gram negative rods that have been implicated in most cases of acute gastroenteritis in developed countries with an incidence of 55.5 cases per 100,000 inhabitants [1]. The most common clinical sign seen in humans infected with Campylobacter spp. is diarrhea, which was estimated to affect about 400–500 million of humans each year worldwide [2]. Other common clinical manifestations are anorexia, malaise, abdominal cramp, fever, headache and vomiting [3, 4]. In human beings, Campylobacter coli and Campylobacter jejuni have been consistently implicated in 90 % of Campylobacter associated illnesses [5]. Strains of C. jejuni appears to be highly prevalent in the gastrointestinal tract of wild and domestic animals, especially in poultry without showing symptoms, which is of particular importance due to the avian-to-human transmission via the consumption of contaminated chicken meat [6, 7]. Even though most Campylobacter related enteric infections are self-limited, macrolides and quinolone antibiotics are preferred for severe cases of infection [8]. Campylobacter strains have particularly developed resistance against these classes of antibiotics after introducing them into animal production [9, 10]. Because of this, clinical efficacy of quinolones and macrolide antibiotics for treating human campylobacteriosis are adversely affected, which posed a major challenge for human health [8]. In Campylobacter, resistance to these agents has been reported to be developed by various mechanisms including efflux pump system and modification of target genes [11]. It has been shown that the Abstract The objective of the current study was to investigate mutations in the gyrA and 23S rRNA gene fragments the high level ciprofloxacin resistant (HL-CipR) Campylobacter isolates (C. jejuni n = 6 and and C. coli n = 9) obtained from chicken meat samples, in Turkey. PCRbased restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) was used to characterize these isolates. In addition, the presence of several virulence traits among these isolates was also examined. Of the 15 HL-CipRCampylobacter strains, there were eight unique RFLP banding patterns. All HL-CipRCampylobacter strains had mutations in codon 86 (Thr-86 to Ile) in the gyrA gene. Four C. jejuni isolates had missense mutation of Asp-203 to Ser, whereas one C. jejuni strain also presented a change at Ala-40 to Ser. A2075G substitution in the 23S rRNA gene was identified in five isolates (C. coli n = 3 and C. jejuni n = 2), whereas none of the isolates had A2074G substitution. The tetO gene conferring resistance to tetracycline were observed among five Campylobacter isolates. Of Campylobacter strains, 13 (86.6 %) were found to be positive for one or more virulence factors, the cdt genes being the most detected. The results of the current study extends the current knowledge about molecular mechanisms for erythromycin and ciprofloxacin resistance as well as virulence traits by investigation of HL-CipRCampylobacter isolates from chicken meat sold in Turkey. Food Measure (2017) 11:586–591 DOI 10.1007/s11694-016-9426-9