Species level identification of thermotolerant campylobacters

The aim of this study was to compare the phenotypic and genotypic based methods for species identification of thermotolerant campylobacters of human and food origin from the Czech Republic. Phenotypic methods are time-consuming and sometimes lead to intermediate results, therefore replacement by more specific and rapid methods are needed. Out of a total of 911 campylobacter strains tested, 800 human isolates were received from the clinical bacteriology laboratories from 5 regions and 111 foodstuff isolates (raw chicken and pork meat from retail market) originated from the routine examination in our laboratory. Based on the PCR method 85.1% of these strains were identified as C. jejuni, 12.5% as C. coli and 2.3% as mixed cultures of C. jejuni and C. coli. When species determination of campylobacters was based on conventional methods (hippurate hydrolysis test), 28.5% of the isolates were not identified correctly. The mixed cultures of campylobacters have not been detected without further subculturing of strains, which takes several days and enormously extends the identification process. The use of the PCR method showed to be a useful tool for species identification of Campylobacter spp.