Evaluation of Colony Lift Immunoblot Methodologies for Specific Enumeration of Enteropathogenic Campylobacter

Abstract

Continued advances and refinements in isolation techniques combined with increased surveillance and epidemiologic studies, have clearly demonstrated that Campylobacter is one of the leading causes of human diarrhoeal disease^{3, 13}. The vast majority of human cases of campylobacteriosis are a result of sporadic infection^{3, 10, 12, 14}. Case control studies in the United States have estimated that 48 to 70% of these sporadic infections are a direct result of the handling or consumption of raw or undercooked poultry^{4, 7}. Thus, growing public and governmental concern for the safety of retail meat and poultry products has spurred the need for rapid, quantitative methods for detecting human pathogens. However, methodologies that allow for the enumeration of the fastidious Campylobacter spp. from food samples have not been adequately explored. We have developed a colony lift immunoassay (CLI) for the identification and enumeration of Campylobacter jejuni/coli/lari grown on the surface of solid agar medium or filter membranes. With the impending U.S. government implementation of the science-based method of safe food production known as Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP), the CLI utilized in combination with improved retail meat and poultry bacterial sampling techniques (Rollins et al., 1–29), would be an efficient means of monitoring the bioload of C. jejuni/coli/lari in large scale commercial operations.

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