Virulence Factors of Campylobacter coli Isolates from Swine and Poultry Origin
Daniel J. Wilkinson1
1School of Science and Technology, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham NG11 8NS, UK
Campylobacter coli are responsible for contributing around 7% of the annual burden of campylobacteriosis, with an estimated 4,500 clinically confirmed cases within the United Kingdom alone in 2012. Swine and poultry represent the natural niche of C. coli where it causes no disease. This study looked at, assessed and compared the virulence factors of C. coli that include; resistance to oxidative stress, resistance to acid stress, resistance to bile salts, motility, adherence, Invasion and toxin production. A number of different phenotypic and genotypic techniques were used to identify these virulence factors in strains of C. coli against a highly invasive, clinically significant C. jejuni strain 01/51 that was used as a control. Campylobacter coli strain B7/1 was identified to be the only strain capable of surviving, to some extent, at low pH conditions present in the human gastrointestinal tract. Campylobacter coli strain 94/208 was the only strain to have a matching virulence gene profile to that of the control, but showed no motility. In addition, the presence of the flaA gene did not necessarily infer motility in C. coli strains. All C. coli strains were found to have a high percentage of autoagglutination and were all resistant to bile salts. The findings in this report concluded that there were no definitive differences in virulence factors across the C. coli strains isolated from the two animal origins and that further investigation would need to be carried out in order to determine if strains were capable of causing disease within humans.