Isolation and polymerase chain reaction-based detection of Campylobacter jejuni and Campylobacter coli from poultry in the Philippines

The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and the conventional culture method of detecting thermophilic Campylobacter species in duck and chicken samples from two locations in the province of Laguna, Philippines, were compared. Three Campylobacter jejuni and five C. coli strains were isolated from a total of 135 duck and chicken samples from both methods. The PCR technique, however, was found to be more sensitive, accurate and rapid than the conventional culture method. The specificity of two sets of published primers, C442-C490 (specific for C. jejuni, C. coli and C. lari) and CL2-CR3 (specific for C. jejuni) were confirmed with reference and field strains. To improve detection, a lysate was prepared by boiling cells in Triton X-100, and then used as template for PCR to detect Campylobacter from spiked and naturally contaminated chicken rinse. For spiked chicken samples, a 17-h Meuller-Hinton Broth enrichment for the chicken rinse resulted in an improved sensitivity at 31.7 CFU/g using C442-C490. This enrichment-PCR tandem also detected thermophilic Campylobacter from 1 out of 21 native chicken samples from a wet market. To our knowledge, this is the first report of thermophilic Campylobacter isolation from poultry in the Philippines. The approaches described here could serve as a basis for future surveillance and/or epidemiological studies on this emerging foodborne pathogen. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.