| Abstrakt: |
To determine the role of foods in the etiology of Campylobacter jejuni/coli (CJC) enteritis and in the transmission of CJC R factors (transferable plasmid-mediated antibiotic resistance factors), two studies, a human case-control study and a bacteriologic survey of meats, were conducted concurrently in King County, Washington. As part of the human study, 218 cases of CJC enteritis diagnosed at Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound (GHC) from April 1982, through September 1983, and for comparison, 526 GHC enrollees without enteritis, were interviewed regarding their consumption of a variety of foods. Consumption of undercooked chicken (relative risk [RR] = 7.6), chicken in general (RR = 2.4), game hen (RR = 3.3), processed turkey sandwich meat (RR = 1.7), raw or rare fish (RR = 4.0), shellfish (RR = 1.5), raw milk (RR = 4.6), and mushrooms (RR = 1.5) were the only foods reported to have been eaten significantly more often by cases than by controls (P<0.05). To determine the prevalence of CJC on meats in King County, Washington, 1,936 swabs were collected for bacteriologic study between February 1982 and September 1983 from premarket chickens, retail poultry and other retail meats, as well as from equipment and work surfaces used to process such foods. CJC was the most common bacterial pathogen isolated from meats and surfaces. Its isolation was restricted almost entirely to poultry. Of the 247 samples collected from chickens in the poultry processing plant, 56.7% were positive for CJC, as were 23.1% of the 862 retail chicken and 17.2% of the 29 retail game hen samples. The pattern of associations of specific meats and CJC enteritis observed in the case-control study closely paralleled the results of bacteriologic sampling of meats from King County retail food markets during the same period. Because of the high frequency with which poultry (especially chicken) is consumed, we estimate that approximately 50% of the cases of CJC enteritis in our population were acquired from this source. Tetracycline resistance, which was plasmid-mediated, was the only CJC R Factor identified in the current study. It was determined to be transmitted via the same foods as were sensitive CJCs, and was carried by 24% of all CJCs isolated from meats. |
