Correlation Between Environmental and Intestinal Clostridium perfringens Isolated from Different Chicken Flocks

Mustafa Bastamy, Ismail Raheel, Marwa Yehia, Mohamed Hamoud, Shahien Noseir, Rabab Khalifa, Samar Ibrahim, Enas Hammad, Lamiaa Elebeedy, Mervat Abdel-Latif, Ahmed Elbestawy and Ahmed Orabi

Background and Objective: Clostridium perfringens is a major enteric pathogen of poultry causing necrotic enteritis (NE). Both clinical and subclinical forms of NE are associated with a huge economic loss, so it is very important to detect and study the correlation between environmental and intestinal C. perfringens isolated from different origins in poultry farms. Materials and Methods: A total of 20 intestinal samples were collected from 20 different commercially diseased poultry flock in Egypt, as well as 10 environmental samples from 10 of the 20 farms that had clinical NE. Statistical package for the social sciences was used for cluster analysis and dendrogram construction. Similarity index between all samples was calculated using the online tool. Results: The bacterial susceptibility patterns of both environmental and intestinal isolates showed high resistance index of 100% against streptomycin sulphate, sulfamethoxazole+trimethoprim, tetracycline and spectinomycin. The resistance reached 70 and 100% to ampicillin and cefotaxime: 50 and 80% to amoxicillin: 65 and 70% to bacitracin for intestinal and environmental C. perfringens isolates, respectively, while the lowest resistance (27%) was to penicillin V. Using cPCR, all isolates carried α toxin gene, while 60 and 25% of intestinal C. perfringens harbored netβ and β-lactamase (bla), meanwhile, 40 and 60% of environmental C. perfringens were positive for netβ and bla genes, respectively. Conclusion: The results of RAPD analysis, similarity index and dendrograms for 4 environmental and intestinal C. perfringens isolates (with bla gene) showed high similarity mainly with the same ancestor of environmental origin, which may explained that contamination with C. perfringens in the environment acts as a source of horizontal bla gene transfer between different C. perfringens strains within poultry farms.

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