Campylobacter in pigs: an epidemiological study

To improve our knowledge of the epidemiology of Campylobacter in pigs and to know the prevalence of these bacteria in pigs around the area of Leipzig, we monitored 60 fattening pigs and 30 piglets. Faeces samples were collected at different times and at the slaughterhouse. Till now 376 isolates could be detected, and all were proved as C. coli. The prevalence of campylobacter in fattening pigs is between 70 and 93 %. All the piglets are negative at the day of birth, but the rate of Campylobacter-positive piglets increased up to 90% after 3 weeks. For epidemiological studies we used two high-resolution genomic fingerprinting methods (AFLP and RFLP) to characterize the isolates at the strain level. We could distinguish 45 AFLP pattern types and 15 RFLP pattern types. Both methods are proved to be useful tools for epidemiological investigations, but the discriminatory power of AFLP is higher