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Background: There are few data on A. baumannii isolated from farm animal populations and their environment. Concerning poultry, an outbreak in a commercial chicken farm in China, as well as occasional findings in chicken and geese have been described. The detection of isolates from raw turkey and chicken meat might, therefore, potentially pose a threat to public health.
Methods: In this study, a total of 643 samples from turkeys, including 250 environmental and 393 diagnostic samples, were examined for the presence of A. baumannii. Species were identified via MALDI-TOF-MS. Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis was conducted for preliminary characterisation. Antimicrobial and biocide susceptibility were tested by broth microdilution, and 26 isolates were further examined using whole-genome sequencing (WGS).
Results: From a total of 643 samples, 99 A. baumannii isolates were obtained (Table 1). The majority of isolates (n=96) with a detection rate of 79.7% originated from chick-box-papers (meconium samples) of one-day-old turkey chicks. Two isolates came from boot swabs before slaughter, and one isolate was cultured from a lung-heart swab. The distributions of the minimal inhibitory concentration values were unimodal for the biocides tested. The highest resistance rates were detected for ciprofloxacin (17%) and no multidrug resistance properties were detected. WGS revealed 16 Pasteur and 18 Oxford sequence types (ST). ST25, which is associated with the international clone 7, was the most common (n=9). Core genome MLST highlighted the diversity of most isolates.
Conclusion: We conclude that the presence of A. baumannii in samples from poultry can vary considerably, is transient, and was confined almost exclusively to chick-box-papers from one-day old chicks. The isolates are highly diverse and still susceptible to many antimicrobial agents. There is no evidence for a preference of A. baumannii for avian hosts.