Shizue Matsusaki

Prevalence of Campylobacter jejuni and Campylobacter coli among Wild and Domestic Animals in Yamaguchi Prefecture

Since Campylobacter jejuni was recognized as a common cause of human gastroenteritis in Europe (1, 7, 26), many reports of Campylobacter enteritis from different parts of the world have been published (4, 6, 11, 22, 24, 25, 33). Not only are C. jejuni and Campylobacter coli known as a common cause of enteritis in domestic animals (8, 12, 13), but also many domestic and wild animals without diarrhea carry this organism (15-17). Despite this prevalence of Campylobacter infection or carriage in human and animals, however, little is known about the source or reservoir of the organism, and thus the ecology of this organism is still not clear. There are reports of contamination of chicken meat with C. jejuni (30) probably because of the occurrence of C. jejuni in chicken feces (9, 14). Moreover, Blaser et al (5) and McMyne et al (23) reported simultaneous isolations of C. jejuni with the same serovar from both human and animals in outbreaks of Campylobacter enteritis. An association of human infection with canine infection has also been observed (3, 29). Thus it is conceivable that the human infection might he related to infection or mere carriage of the organism in animals (14, 17, 28), or to contaminated water (31) or raw milk (2).

The salting-out test to identify virulent Yersinia pseudotuberculosis

A total of 54 strains including 8 serotypes of Yersinia pseudotuberculosis were examined to find out about their cell surface hydrophobicity and virulence plasmid-associated properties. All the strains which aggregated in 0.9% saline expressed the properties of calcium-dependent growth and autoagglutination. However, the hydrophilic strains did not possess virulence plasmid-associated properties. The above results suggest that the salting-out test with 0.9% saline could be an effective measure to differentiate the virulence plasmid-carrying strains of Y. pseudotuberculosis from those of plasmidless virulence.