ABSTRACT
Zoonotic disease constitutes a major public health problem worldwide, since more than 60% of human pathogens have zoonotic origin and have been associated with animal diseases, causing severe economic losses. Campylobacteriosis one such zoonotic disease, which is caused by Campylobacter, spiral-shaped bacteria that are a major cause of gastroenteritis in animals and humans worldwide. Its infection occurs more commonly than infections caused by other species such as Salmonella, Escherichia coli, Listeria and Shigella. Campylobacter includes various species, such as Campylobacter jejuni, Campylobacter coli, Campylobacter fetus and Campylobacter upsaliensis, which cause Campylobacteriosis in animals and in humans. Campylobacter species are widely allocated in the reproductive and intestinal tracts of warm-blooded animals and birds including poultry, cattle, pigs, cats, dogs, sheep, ostriches, ducks etc. In animals, infection occurs through the faecal-oral route. Infection can be diagnosed by culturing, which detects the bacteria in stool, body tissue or fluids in animals as well as in humans, but in healthy individuals it is also found in the intestine, so a positive culture alone is not satisfactory. There are no specific symptoms of this infection, which makes its diagnosis obligatory to accomplish specialized microbiological diagnostics and molecular methods which are accurate and rapid. In this chapter, we will discuss these rapid diagnostic methods, including PCR, multiplex-PCR, RT-PCR, DNA microarray, ELISA, biochemical characterization, serotyping, PCR-RFLP, RAPD, fla-SVR, ribotyping, metagenomics, 16S-sequencing and others, which have been developed for diagnosis. These tools are fast, sensitive and specific and also deliver quantitative data.
