Prevalence and diversity of Arcobacter spp. in retail chicken meat in Turkey

• Main Authors: Celenk Molva, Halil Ibrahim Atabay
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2016-07-01
• Series: Microbiology Research
• Subjects: A. butzleri; pathogen; chicken; multiplex-PCR
• Online Access: http://www.pagepress.org/journals/index.php/mr/article/view/6578

Arcobacters are food and waterborne pathogens associated with human and animal infections. The objective of the present study was to investigate the prevalence and diversity of <em>Arcobacter</em> spp. in commercially sold chicken meat in İzmir region of Turkey. For this purpose, 100 samples including legs (n=40), 17 chicken quarters (n=17), drumstickers (n=16), breasts (n=11), wings (n=10), and carcasses (n=6) were collected from different retail markets. A total of 65 isolates were confirmed as <em>Arcobacter</em> spp. from 55 samples by genus-specific polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The prevalence of <em>Arcobacter</em> spp. was 32.5, 81.3, 64.7, 72.7, 83.3, and 50% for legs, drumstickers, chicken quarters, breasts, carcasses and wings, respectively. Based on the multiplex-PCR, most of the isolates were identified as <em>A. butzleri</em> (n=45, 80%), followed by <em>A. cryaerophilus</em> (n=2, 3.6%), <em>A. skirrowii</em> (n=1, 1.8%) and 17 isolates (30.9%) could not be identified at the species level.