Antibiotic resistance patterns of chicken and human origin Campylobacter spp. in Turkey

Campylobacteriosis is of great importance for both human and chicken populations. Unconcious and overuse of antibiotics in chickens has led to the transmission of antibiotic resistance patterns to humans. The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of thermophilic Campylobacter species from the cecal samples at slaughter houses, and also common antibiotic resistance patterns shared between chicken origin and human origin thermophilic Campylobacter species. Isolation and identification was performed according to EN ISO 10272-1: 2017 and Real-Time Multiplex qPCR, respectively. Antibiotic susceptibility test was performed by using the Kirby Bauer Disk Diffusion Method. Of the examined randomly collected 180 cecal samples at evisceration stage in slaughterhouses, 19 (10.5%), 17 (9.44%) and 2 (1.11%) were found to harbour Campylobacter spp., C. jejuni and C. coli, respectively. The highest resistance was determined against quinolones (86.04%) and fluoroquinolones (86.04%) among the tested 43 Campylobacter spp., comprising 19 chicken origin and 24 human origin. Except for erythromycin and gentamicin, all C. jejuni isolates from chickens and humans were found to be resistant to two or three of the antibiotics tested. The same multidrug resistance profiles observed in chicken origin C. jejuni isolates for TET/CIP/NA (70.58%) and CIP/NA (29.41%) were also determined in human origin C. jejuni isolates with the rate of 25% and 50%, respectively for each. To sum up, the same resistance patterns against common antibiotics shared in both human and chicken origin C. jejuni has pose a significant public health problem.