Campylobacter is currently the most frequently reported cause of acute bacterial gastroenteritis in Israel and other developed countries. The annual incidence in Israel was tripled during the last 15 years to about 90 reported cases per 100,000 population and estimations are that the actual rate is 5-50 times higher. Campylobacter is commensal organism in the digestive tracts of many wild and domesticated animals. Contaminated food, particularly poultry, is considered to be the main human exposure pathway. In Israel, monitoring of Campylobacter in food products isn’t performed. Therefore we conducted a preliminary survey to test Campylobacter contamination on poultry meat. Traditional culture-based detection of Campylobacter requires 5-6 working days. Additionally, bacteria which are viable but non-culturable are not detected by culture methods. Real-time quantitative PCR (TaqMan), using the 16S rRNA gene, enables faster, more sensitive, and less labor-intensive quantitative detection. The method used in this study enables quantification of the major food-borne Campylobacter species: C. jejuni, C. coli and C. lari, which are responsible for more than 99% of the reported Campylobacteriosis cases. Differentiation between viable and dead cells is performed using Propodium monoazide (PMA), that intercalates into DNA from dead cells and prevent its amplification. This method was used to detect Campylobacter from about 100 poultry that were sampled from retailers and slaughterhouse in Jerusalem area. The PCR results were compared to culture based results, which were generally found to be less sensitive. More than 80% of the samples were positive, and more than 20% with more than 1,000 CFU/g.
