Incidence and antimicrobial resistance profiling of Campylobacter in retail chicken livers and gizzards.

Campylobacter species are one of the leading causes of foodborne disease in the United States. Campylobacter jejuni and Campylobacter coli are the two main species that are of concern to human health, and they cause approximately 95% of human infections. The number of studies investigating Campylobacter in chicken livers and gizzards is very limited in the literature. The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of Campylobacter jejuni and Campylobacter coli in retail chicken livers and gizzards purchased from grocery stores in the Tulsa, Oklahoma, area and to further characterize the isolates obtained through antimicrobial susceptibility testing. A total of 202 retail chilled chicken livers and gizzards (159 livers and 43 gizzards) were purchased on a weekly basis from several grocery stores. The overall prevalence of Campylobacter in chicken livers and gizzards was 136/202 (67%), where 69/202 (34%) of the samples were contaminated with Campylobacter jejuni and 66/202 (33%) with Campylobacter coli. While the prevalence of Campylobacter in chicken livers was 77%, its prevalence in chicken gizzards was lower at 33%. The prevalence of Campylobacter jejuni was slightly higher in chicken livers (36%) than gizzards (26%), while the prevalence of Campylobacter coli was significantly higher in the chicken livers (40%) than chicken gizzards (7%). The prevalence of resistance among C. jejuni and C. coli isolates recovered against 16 antimicrobials were as follows: amoxicillin (98%, 99%), ampicillin (32%, 55%), azithromycin (10%, 25%), cephalothin (92%, 99%), chloramphenicol (4%, 12%), ciprofloxacin (58%, 48%), clindamycin (5%, 19%), doxycycline (39%, 66%), erythromycin (6%, 32%), gentamicin (9%, 43%), kanamycin (11%, 43%), nalidixic acid (50%, 43%), oxytetracycline (99%, 100%), streptomycin (3%, 18%), tetracycline (37%, 60%), and tilmicosin (9%, 16%). Multidrug resistance was higher among Campylobacter coli than Campylobacter jejuni isolates.