Molecular Epidemiology of Campylobacter spp. in Broiler Meat and Quantitative Modeling of the Risk of Human Campylobacteriosis in the Egyptian Setting

The project will provide the first baseline data on prevalence and counts of Campylobacter in broiler meat. Such data will be used for developing a quantitative microbiological risk assessment (QMRA) for this important foodborne zoonotic pathogen. The integration of both molecular and risk modeling tools to investigate the problem of zoonotic infectious pathogens in Egypt is very novel and will provide new insights about Campylobacter epidemiology. The project approach could be adopted as a research model for investigating other zoonotic pathogens in developing countries setting.

The funded activities through the Swedish Research Links program will help in achieving institutional collaboration between the involved research groups from Egypt and Sweden; that will be achieved through exchange of researchers, high quality international publications, and organizing trainings for the benefit of the scientific communities in both countries.

The specific tasks of this project are:

1. To generate baseline survey data on prevalence and counts of Campylobacter in retail chicken meat, the most important source of campylobacteriosis.

2. To study the clonal population structure and genotypic diversity of Campylobacter jejuni isolates generated from the baseline survey.

3. To characterize antimicrobial resistance patterns in a subset of Campylobacter jejuni isolated.

4. To develop a probabilistic quantitative assessment model for human campylobacteriosis infection risk arising from consumption of broiler meat in the setting of Alexandria, Northern Egypt.

Funded by: Swedish Reserach Links, 2015-17

Principal investigators: Sofia Boqvist, SLU and Ihab Habib, Murdoch University, Australia

Collaborators: Neveen Agamy, Salma Bekhit, Walla Osama, Mohammad Anwar, Lise-Lotte Fernström, Ivar Vågsholm, Ingrid Hansson