Abstract
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 for Campylobacter epidemiological studies to determine potential sources of human infections. The collection of 420 Campylobacter jejuni isolates 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 human C. jejuni infections (n = 132) in Baltic States. Source attribution analysis revealed that poultry (88.3%) is the main source of C. jejuni human infections followed by cattle and wild bird with 9.4% and 2.3%, respectively. Our findings demonstrated that clinical cases of C. jejuni infections in Baltic countries are mainly linked to poultry, but also to cattle and wild bird sources.
Highlights
Campylobacteriosis is the most commonly reported zoonosis in the European Union with 246,571 confirmed human cases, which represents a notification rate of 64.1 per 100,000 population in 2018 [1]
The aim of this study was to comprehensively describe the entire Baltic region’s C. jejuni Multilocus sequence typing (MLST) genotype diversity within poultry, cattle and wild bird sources by aggregating data from surveys conducted in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania
Probabilistic asymmetric island (AI) attribution model used in present source attribution study has potential to broaden our knowledge regarding epidemiology and relative contribution of probable reservoirs of C. jejuni human infections in the Baltic States
Summary
Campylobacteriosis is the most commonly reported zoonosis in the European Union with 246,571 confirmed human cases, which represents a notification rate of 64.1 per 100,000 population in 2018 [1]. Campylobacter jejuni was reported in 83.9% of the confirmed cases where species information was provided (55.2%). In the Baltic states there are approximately 6 million inhabitants among whom 1,417 cases were confirmed in 2018 with an average notification rate of 22.8 per 100,000 population. All Estonian (n = 411), 97,8% of Latvian (n = 87) and 99.4% of Lithuanian (n = 919) cases were confirmed with notification rates 31.2, 4.5, 32.7 per 100,000 population, respectively. In 2018 Lithuania reported five Campylobacter related foodborne outbreaks (FBO) with 10 human cases in combined. At the same time no Campylobacter related FBOs were reported in Estonia nor Latvia [1]. Campylobacter related infections are at high clinical importance as accompanying symptoms vary from mild fever, abdominal pain, vomiting, dehydration to bloody diarrhea and in some cases sever neurological disorder
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