The source attribution analysis revealed the prevalent role of poultry over cattle and wild birds in human campylobacteriosis cases in the Baltic States

The reservoir and source of human campylobacteriosis is primarily considered to be poultry, but also other such as ruminants, pets and environmental sources are related with infection burden. Multilocus sequence typing is often used forCampylobacterepidemiological studies to determine potential sources of human infections. The collection of 420Campylobacter jejuniisolates with assigned MLST genotype from poultry (n = 139), cattle (n = 48) and wild birds (n = 101) were used in source attribution analysis. Asymmetric island model with accurate and congruent self-attribution results, was used to determine potential sources of humanC.jejuniinfections (n = 132) in Baltic States. Source attribution analysis revealed that poultry (88.3%) is the main source ofC.jejunihuman infections followed by cattle and wild bird with 9.4% and 2.3%, respectively. Our findings demonstrated that clinical cases ofC.jejuniinfections in Baltic countries are mainly linked to poultry, but also to cattle and wild bird sources.