Abstract
Campylobacter is the leading agent of diarrheal disease worldwide. This study evaluates a novel culture-PCR hybrid (MPN-PCR) assay for the rapid enumeration of Campylobacter spp. from estuarine and wastewater systems. To first evaluate the current, culture-based, Australian standard, an inter-laboratory study was conducted on 69 subsampled water samples. The proposed Most-Probable Number (MPN)-PCR method was then evaluated, by analysing 147 estuarine samples collected over a 2 year period. Data for 14 different biological, hydrological and climatic parameters were also collated to identify pathogen-environment relationships and assess the potential for method specific bias. The results demonstrated that the intra-laboratory performance of the MPN-PCR was superior to that of AS/NZS (σ = 0.7912, P < 0.001; κ = 0.701, P < 0.001) with an overall diagnostic accuracy of ~94%. Furthermore, the analysis of both MPN-PCR and AS/NZS identified the potential for the introduction of method specific bias during assessment of the effects of environmental parameters on Campylobacter spp. numbers.
Highlights
Campylobacteriosis is a zoonosis spread into the environment through the release of fecal material
Current WHO figures suggest that Campylobacter are the leading cause of diarrheal disease in industrialized nations with annually more than 60, 000 and 17, 000 confirmed cases reported respectively in the United Kingdom (UK) and Australia alone (Corvisy, 2013; Hughes and Gorton, 2013)
Assays for the detection of Campylobacter have been trialed and the results found to be comparable to culture-based methods (Savill et al, 2001; St-Pierre et al, 2009)
Summary
Campylobacteriosis is a zoonosis spread into the environment through the release of fecal material. The primary route of infection is through ingestion of contaminated food products. Environmental sources, such as water used for recreational purposes and stormwater flows, represent an often overlooked source of disease transmission (Adak et al, 1995; Pond, 2005; Arnone and Walling, 2007); 3% of confirmed cases in the UK were reported as the direct result of contact with contaminated water supplies (Anonymous, 2000). Campylobacter survival within non-biological settings (i.e., water and soils) (Thomas et al, 1999; Ross and Donnison, 2006; Donnison and Ross, 2009; Rodríguez and Araujo, 2012), is dependent on numerous exogenous variables. Variations in climatic, biological and hydrological conditions have direct implications on human health outcomes (Patz et al, 2003)
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