In a paper published in the journal, Epidemiology and Infection, Y. Sasaki and colleagues at the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in Tokyo describe a study investigating the prevalence and antimicrobial susceptibility of Salmonella isolated from broiler flocks in Japan.

Caecal dropping samples were collected from 288 broiler flocks between November 2007 and February 2010.

Salmonella was prevalent in 248 (86.1 per cent) broiler flocks.

The top three serovars were S. Infantis, S. Manhattan and S. Schwarzengrund. S. Infantis was found in all regions tested in this study. However, S. Manhattan and S. Schwarzengrund were frequently found only in the western part of Japan.

The research revealed high antimicrobial resistance rates against oxytetracycline (90.2 per cent), dihydrostreptomycin (86.7 per cent) and ampicillin (36.5 per cent). A total of 258 (90.5 per cent) of 285 isolates were resistant to two or more antimicrobial agents.

Interestingly, 26.3 per cent of isolates were resistant to ceftiofur, especially 38.1 per cent of S. Infantis isolates, although its use in broilers has not been approved in Japan.

Sasaki and co-authors concluded that Salmonella is highly prevalent (86.1 per cent) in Japanese broiler flocks, that 90.5 per cent of Salmonella isolates were multidrug-resistant, and that S. Infantis frequently exhibited resistance to cephalosporin antimicrobial agents.

Reference

Sasaki Y., A. Ikeda, K. Ishikawa, M. Murakami, M. Kusukawa, T. Asai and Y. Yamada. 2012. Prevalence and antimicrobial susceptibility of Salmonella in Japanese broiler flocks. Epidemiology and Infection. Available on CJO. doi:10.1017/S0950268812000039

Further Reading

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