Antimicrobial Susceptibility Profiles of Human Campylobacter jejuni Isolates and Association with Phylogenetic Lineages

Abstract

Campylobacter jejuni is a zoonotic pathogen and the most common bacterial cause of human gastroenteritis worldwide. With the increase of antibiotic resistance to fluoroquinolones and macrolides, the drugs of choice for treatment, C. jejuni was recently classified as a serious antimicrobial resistant threat. Here, we characterized 94 C. jejuni isolates collected from patients at four Michigan hospitals in 2011 and 2012 to determine the frequency of resistance and association with phylogenetic lineages. The prevalence of resistance to fluoroquinolones (19.1%) and macrolides (2.1%) in this subset of C. jejuni isolates from Michigan was similar to national reports. High frequencies of fluoroquinolone-resistant C. jejuni isolates, however, were recovered from patients with a history of foreign travel. A high proportion of these resistant isolates were classified as multilocus sequence type (ST)-464, a fluoroquinolone-resistant lineage that recently emerged in Europe. A significantly higher prevalence of tetracycline-resistant C. jejuni was also found in Michigan and resistant isolates were more likely to represent ST-982, which has been previously recovered from ruminants and the environment in the U.S. Notably, patients with tetracycline-resistant C. jejuni infections were more likely to have contact with cattle. These outcomes prompt the need to monitor the dissemination and diversification of imported fluoroquinolone-resistant C. jejuni strains and to investigate the molecular epidemiology of C. jejuni recovered from cattle and farm environments to guide mitigation strategies.

Antimicrobial resistance patterns and molecular resistance markers of Campylobacter jejuni isolates from human diarrheal cases

“…Most (80%) of the isolates assigned to ST-464 had the same resistance profile (CIP NAL TET) with all ST-464 isolates resistant to tetracycline. Association of this ST with quinolone/fluoroquinolone and tetracycline co-resistance has been previously described, supported by the observation that this ST has been reported as a fluoroquinolone-resistant lineage that has recently spread clonally in Europe [36,70]. Indeed, clonal dissemination of AMR clones might explain, at least partially, the increasing trend of fluoroquinolone resistance observed in Europe and worldwide [37,71,72].…”

Antimicrobial Resistance and Virulence-Associated Markers in Campylobacter Strains From Diarrheic and Non-diarrheic Humans in Poland

“…Among Campylobacter strains assigned to ST-464, the multidrug resistance to ciprofloxacin, nalidixic acid, tetracycline ciprofloxacin, tetracycline, and ceftriaxone was confirmed in the studies conducted, e.g., by Cha et al (2016) in United States and Aksomaitiene et al (2019) in Lithuania. Moreover, Cha et al (2016) underlined the need to enhance surveillance efforts and identify factors associated with global spread of this resistant sequence type, especially because the majority of the ST-464 isolates were obtained from individuals in United States with a history of foreign travel. Interestingly, this sequence type was identified only among samples from diarrheic persons.…”

Carvacrol attenuates Campylobacter jejuni colonization factors and proteome critical for persistence in the chicken gut

“…Therefore, attenuating the aforementioned factors could potentially reduce the colonization of C. jejuni in the poultry gut. With increasing antibiotic resistance in C. jejuni ( Luangtongkum et al., 2009 ; Cha et al., 2016 ), there is a need for novel strategies to control C. jejuni in chickens. We investigated the efficacy of carvacrol in reducing C. jejuni colonization potential in vitro as a first step before conducting future in vivo experiments.…”