Presence of Arcobacter spp. in environmental waters correlates with high levels of fecal pollution

Abstract

We investigated the presence of Arcobacter spp. in 205 water samples of freshwater, seawater and sewage in Spain. These bacteria were present in 55.1% of the samples (113/205) and were significantly associated for the first time with bacterial indicators of fecal pollution. The dominant species in the positive samples was Arcobacter butzleri (94%) followed by Arcobacter cryaerophilus (30%) and Arcobacter skirrowii (1.8%).

Arcobacter

“…There is an increasing body of literature detailing that Arcobacter is a consistent component of human sewage systems (Stampi et al, 1993(Stampi et al, , 1999Moreno et al, 2003;González et al, 2007Collado et al, 2008Collado et al, , 2010McLellan et al, 2010;Fisher et al, 2014;Merga et al, 2014;Banting et al, 2016;Webb et al, 2016b), likely able to replicate outside of a vertebrate host within the sewage infrastructure system and wastewater treatment plants Shanks et al, 2013, Fisher et al, 2014. This supports the observation of the levels of Arcobacter found in wastewater being much higher than expected based on human carriage rates.…”

“…An earlier report quantitating the single species A. cryaerophilus within sludge, showed a 1 log 10 reduction (10 3 to 10 2 MPN/g) during anaerobic sludge digestion (Stampi et al, 1993 (Stampi et al, 1999;Collado et al, 2008), with no apparent reduction during that secondary treatment.…”

Arcobacter mytili sp. nov., an indoxyl acetate-hydrolysis-negative bacterium isolated from mussels

“…However, the isolates showed a novel RFLP pattern (650/143/138 bp) that did not correspond to any of the recognized Arcobacter species . One additional isolate (T234) was recovered (June 2008) from brackish water (salinity 14.4 %) of the Ebro river delta using the isolation procedure described by Collado et al (2008). This isolate was also identified as A. skirrowii with m-PCR and showed the same RFLP pattern as the mussel isolates.…”

“…After incubation for 48 h at 30 u C under aerobic conditions, 200 ml broth was inoculated on a blood agar (BA) plate following the procedure described by Collado et al (2008). Small, colourless or beige-to-offwhite, translucent colonies, the characteristic form of colonial growth for members of the genus Arcobacter, were selected from each sample for genetic identification.…”

Detection of Bacterial Pathogens in River Water Using Multiplex-PCR

“…In Northern Africa, the present water supply is unstable as population growth and economic development have surpassed the traditional water isolated from different environmental water sources including surface and ground water. Their presence has been correlated with that of faecal pollution indicators (Collado et al, 2008;Fong et al, 2007;Ho et al, 2006) as well as meat mainly from poultry, pork and beef (Collada et al, 2009;Houf, 2010;Wesley and Miller, 2010). Some members of the genus Arcobacter, like A. butzleri, A. cryaerophilus, and A. skirrowii, have been implicated in animal and human diarrhoeal cases, suggesting a faecal oral route of transmission to humans and animals (Gonzalez et al, 2007).…”