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Appl. Environ. Microbiol. doi:10.1128/AEM.01455-07
Copyright (c) 2007, American Society for Microbiology and/or the Listed Authors/Institutions. All Rights Reserved.

Has Retail Chicken Played a Role in the Decline of Human Campylobacteriosis?

Department of Medical Microbiology, School of Medicine, University of Aberdeen, Foresterhill, Aberdeen, UK, AB25 2ZD; School of Biological Sciences, Cruikshank Building, St Machar Drive, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK, AB24 3UU

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: n.strachan{at}abdn.ac.uk.

	Abstract

Between 2001 and 2006 human Campylobacter infections decreased by 10% and 27% in Scotland and Grampian respectively. A contemporaneous collection and analysis of human and retail chicken isolates from Grampian was carried out throughout a 20 week period during 2001 and 2006 in order to determine whether the fall in human infections was related to the retail chicken exposure route.

Carriage rates of Campylobacter on chicken carcasses from retail outlets in Grampian were estimated in 2001 and 2006. Chicken-derived Campylobacter isolates from 2001 (n=84) and 2006 (n=105), and human-derived isolates from clinical cases in 2001 (n=172) and 2006 (n=119), were typed by multilocus sequence typing (MLST).

We found no evidence for statistically significant changes in prevalence and counts per carcass. We found by rarefaction that although the diversity in humans tended to be higher than for chicken, these differences were not significant. The genetic distance between chicken and human isolates from 2001 was not significant according to sequence type (ST), clonal complex (CC) or allele composition whereas in 2006 the distance was significant at the CC and allele level. This difference was attributable to a lower proportion of CC-21 found in retail chicken in 2006.

We conclude that human exposure to Campylobacter via retail chicken is important and that changes in the population structure of campylobacters in this reservoir needs to be taken into account when investigating human infection.