Inquiring into the Gaps of Campylobacter Surveillance Methods

Abstract

Campylobacter is one of the most common pathogen-related causes of diarrheal illnesses globally and has been recognized as a significant factor of human disease for more than three decades. Molecular typing techniques and their combinations have allowed for species identification among members of the Campylobacter genus with good resolution, but the same tools usually fail to proceed to subtyping of closely related species due to high sequence similarity. This problem is exacerbated by the demanding conditions for isolation and detection from the human, animal or water samples as well as due to the difficulties during laboratory maintenance and long-term storage of the isolates. In an effort to define the ideal typing tool, we underline the strengths and limitations of the typing methodologies currently used to map the broad epidemiologic profile of campylobacteriosis in public health and outbreak investigations. The application of both the old and the new molecular typing tools is discussed and an indirect comparison is presented among the preferred techniques used in current research methodology.

Keywords: Campylobacteriosis; epidemiology; human infection; methodology; molecular typing; surveillance; zoonosis.

Figure 1

Graphical analysis of the applied molecular typing methodologies over time based on PubMed search. The use of molecular methodologies for the differentiation of Campylobacter at species and strain level has been modified during the last decades according to the new trends in technology, the improvements in bioinformatics, and the needs of the scientific community. Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP), fla short variable region (fla-SVR), fla restriction fragment length polymorphism (fla-RFLP), multi-locus sequence typing (MLST), microarray comparative genomic hybridization (MCGH), major outer membrane protein (MOMP), whole genome sequencing (WGS).