Helicobacter pullorum in broiler chickens and the farm environment: A One Health approach

Research Article

International Journal of One Health, 5: 20-25

https://doi.org/10.14202/IJOH.2019.20-25

Soe Soe Wai¹, Saleha Abdul-Aziz¹, Asinamai Athliamai Bitrus^1,2, Zakaria Zunita¹, and Jalila Abu¹

1. Department of Pathology and Microbiology, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 UPM Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia.
2. Research Unit in Microbial Food Safety and Antimicrobial Resistance, Department of Veterinary Public Health, Faculty of Veterinary Science, Chulalongkorn University, 10330 Bangkok, Thailand.

Background and Aim: This study aimed to investigate the occurrence of Helicobacter pullorum in broiler chickens and their farm environment.

Materials and Methods: The ceca from 100 broiler chickens from ten farms were sampled from processing sites or markets. The cecal contents were aseptically collected from each cecum and cultured. The farms were visited, and environmental samples were collected which included water, house flies, floor swabs and soils in chicken houses.

Results: H. pullorum was present in 51% of the broilers; 17.5% of the flies were found to carry H. pullorum and Campylobacter spp., 30% of house floors were positive, while all water samples were negative.

Conclusion: Flies could have picked up the organisms from the chickens' feces and/or the environment of the chicken houses or they could be one of the sources in the spread of the organisms. This study also showed that broiler chickens are potential reservoirs for H. pullorum and may serve as a source of infection for humans through the food chain. Keywords: broiler chickens, Campylobacter, Helicobacter pullorum, house flies.

Keywords: broiler chickens, Campylobacter, Helicobacter pullorum, house flies.

How to cite this article: Wai SS, Abdul-Aziz S, Bitrus AA, Zunita Z, Abu J. Helicobacter pullorum in broiler chickens and the farm environment: A One Health approach. Int J One Health 2019;5:20-25.

Received: 13-11-2018 Accepted: 28-01-2019 Published online: 18-03-2019

Corresponding author: Saleha Abdul-Aziz E-mail: saleha@upm.edu.my

DOI: 10.14202/IJOH.2019.20-25

Copyright: Wai, et al. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.