‘1001’ Campylobacters: cultural characteristics of intestinal campylobacters from man and animals

Abstract

The cultural characteristics of 1220 Campylobacter strains from a variety of sources are described. Forty-two were identified as Campylobacter fetus ssp. fetus (Véron & Chatelain, 1973), 1120 as members of the C. jejuni/C. coli group, and 58 did not conform to any known description. Sixteen of the latter strains had the basic characteristics of C. fetus but were atypical in certain other respects. The other 42 strains had the thermophilic characteristics of the jejuni/coli group, but were resistant to nalidixic acid and had other features in common; it is possible that they represent a new species. They were isolated from 19% of locally caught wild seagulls but only occasionally from other animals and man.Growth at 25 degrees C clearly distinguished strains of C. fetus from those of the jejuni/coli and the nalidixic acid-resistant thermophilic (NARTC) groups. Maximum growth temperature was less reliable for this purpose, and 43 degrees C was found to be better than the traditional 42 degrees C. By arranging the results of three tests (tolerance to 2,3,5-triphenyltetrazolium chloride, growth at 30.5 and 45.5 degrees C) serially in the form of a schema comprising nine categories, the jejuni/coli strains fell into two main groups resembling the Institute Pasteur C. jejuni and C. coli type strains, but these groups could not be clearly defined owing to the existence of strains with intermediate characteristics.Most of the strains from cattle resembled C. jejuni, whereas those from pigs resembled C. coli; poultry strains occupied a more intermediate position. Strains from man and other animals were of mixed types, but most human strains resembled C. jejuni rather than C. coli. The type distribution pattern that most nearly matched that of human indigenous strains was given by a half-and-half mixture of strains from cattle and poultry.

Campylobacter

“…Therefore, the aim of the present article is to review atypical and emerging examples among the genus. Five years after, following the original description of C. lari organisms by Skirrow and Benjamin in 1980 [155], Bolton et al [20] isolated the first 10 atypical isolates of C. lari, urease-positive thermophilic Campylobacter (UPTC) from the natural environment in England in 1985 [20]. This was the first example of ureaseproducing bacteria among the genus Campylobacter.…”

“…This method involved the filtering of stools samples through 0.64 µ membrane filters and inoculating the filters onto agar. This method proved too cumbersome and in 1977, Martin Skirrow from Worcester Public Health Laboratory, described a simple direct technique, involving the direct culturing of faeces onto blood agar containing vancomycin, polymyxin and trimethoprim [153][154][155][156]. Plates were incubated at 43 °C in an microaerophilic atmosphere containing 5% (v/v) O 2 , 10% (v/v) CO 2 and 85% (v/v) N 2.…”

“…The improved isolation methods led to the publication of the first report of the frequency of campylobacters in association with humans, thereby leading to an avalanche of epidemiological research and consequently to the realization that campylobacters have now emerged as a significant public health problem for both developed and underdeveloped countries [44,147,[153][154][155][156]165].…”

The pathogenicity of environmental campylobacters-a human volunteer experiment

“…The environmental campylobacter described here are indistinguishable on colonial or microscopic morphology from C. jejuni. The strains, resembling some of the environmental strains studied in the '1001' isolate survey (Skirrow & Benjamin, 1980b), were hippurate-negative by the Hwang and Ederer method but otherwise more closely resembled C. jejuni than C. coli (Skirrow, personal communication). Some apparently hippurate-negative strains are in fact positive when tested by more sensitive methods (Morris et al 1985).…”

Serogroups of thermophilic campylobacters from humans and from non-human sources, Israel 1982–1985

“…or res.) as recommended (Skirrow & Benjamin, 1980). This method differentiates three species among the thermophilic campylobacters: C. jejuni (Hipp.…”