Resistotyping of Campylobacter jejuni

The principal objective of typing in epidemiology is to trace a strain as it passes from one individual to another. Resistotyping is a phenotypic method that consists of testing bacterial strains against a set of arbitrarily chosen chemical agents, whereby, a resistance pattern that is characteristic of a strain is generated and, is believed to describe the isolates for epidemiological purposes. This simple typing system is described for campylobacter isolated in Lagos, Nigeria. Resistotyping was performed with twenty chemical agents incorporated into disc. The resistotyping results revealed that the twenty isolates from human and chickens belonged to 14 different resistotypes with the largest group comprising 25% of the isolates. The human strains were distinctly differentiated into eight resistotypes. All the Campylobacter Jejuni isolates were resistant to potassium chloride (A), Boric acid (B), Sodium biselenite (C), potassium dischromate (F), potassium permanganate (I) ferrous sulphate (N), magnesium sulphate (O), sodium hydrogen phosphate (P), sodium sulphate (Q), and magnesium chloride (R). Only one strain was resistant to mercuric chloride (M) while three of the strains were sensitive to disodium orthophosphate (H), sodium azide (J), and metronidazole (T). The method seems to be adequate for defining the relatedness of our isolates in epidemiologic situation and has proven promising for Campylobacter jejuni in our environment.