Campylobacter jejuni in Penguins, Antarctica

lence of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus among veterinarians: an international study.tis due to meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus originating from pigs Data collection on a proposal for technical specifi cations for a baseline survey on the prevalence of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in breeding pigs. Development of a PCR test to differentiate between Staphylococcus aureus and Staphylococcus intermedius. A new multiplex PCR for easy screening of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus SCCmec types I–V. Novel multiplex PCR assay for characterization and concomi-tant subtyping of staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec types I to V in methi-cillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. de Neeling AJ, et al. Transmission of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus au-reus strains between different kinds of pig farms. To the Editor: The wildlife of Antarctica is highly specialized. Although large animal species are limited primarily to penguins and seals, each species is often abundant. The high degree of isolation potentially protects Antarctic wildlife from diseases distributed in other areas of the world (1,2). Despite Antarctica's isolation, however, human-or animal-related pathogens have been found there, or in the sub-Antarctic islands. For instance , serologic evidence of infl uen-za virus A infections in penguins has been found (3), and both Salmonella spp. and Mycobacterium tuberculosis have been isolated from sub-Antarctic and Antarctic animals (4,5). Campylobacter jejuni is a leading cause of bacterial gastroenteritis in humans worldwide; it is usually found in the intestinal tract of various farm and wild animals, particularly birds (6,7). We previously reported fi nding 3 C. jejuni subsp. jejuni isolates in macaroni penguins (Eudyptes chrysolophus; Figure) from Bird Island (54°00′S, 38°02′W), South Georgia (1). Phe-notypic tests and 16S rRNA gene se-quencing showed that the penguin isolates were identical to each other, and macrorestriction profi ling of pulsed-fi eld gel electrophoresis fragments showed that they were very similar to fragments isolated from poultry in Washington in 1984 (1). Because the isolates were retrieved from macaroni penguin chicks, we concluded that the animals had acquired the infection locally and that this was likely an instance of introduction of a pathogen to the Antarctic region. However, restriction fragment pattern resemblance is not identical to genetic relatedness and, given the relevance of the question of origin, this resemblance led us to use a new method for genetic characterization. We reanalyzed the macaroni penguin isolates with multilocus sequence typing (MLST), a method that uses sequence data from 7 unlinked loci for genetic identifi cation (8), complemented with fl aA gene sequencing. A benefi …