Campylobacter jejuni enteritis associated with raw goat's milk

Abstract

During a three-week period in July 1983, six cases of Campylobacter jejuni enteritis in King County, Washington were associated with a dairy that produced raw goat's milk. Four patients consumed the dairy's milk, and the other two patients comprised an employee of the dairy and her infant son. Two case-control studies confirmed that, at the time the cases occurred, consumption of the dairy's milk was a risk factor for C. jejuni enteritis in King County. C. jejuni was isolated from the intestinal tract of three of the dairy's goats. Two of the three isolates, as well as those from five of the patients (all of those tested), were Lior serotype 36. That serotype was not encountered among 14 other C. jejuni isolates from King County during the period of the outbreak, including three isolates from goats at another inspected dairy. The study shows that raw goat's milk may transmit C. jejuni infection from animals to humans, as other investigators have shown for unpasteurized cow's milk.