Arcobacter species are emerging foodborne pathogens that are associated with human gastrointestinal illness. Typical symptoms of Arcobacter... Show moreArcobacter species are emerging foodborne pathogens that are associated with human gastrointestinal illness. Typical symptoms of Arcobacter infection that have been reported include diarrhea, abdominal cramps, nausea, vomiting, and in severe cases, bacteremia. Consumption of contaminated food and water is the most common transmission source that leads to human infection. When consumed, pathogenic Arcobacter spp. pass through the stomach and establishes themselves in the host intestinal tract, where they cause gastroenteritis. Currently, there is no standard isolation method to detect pathogenic Arcobacter spp. from food and environment sample matrices. The research detailed in this thesis describes the development of the Nguyen-Restaino-Juárez Arcobacter detection system (NRJ) comprised of a selective enrichment broth and a chromogenic agar plate used to isolate three pathogenic species: Arcobacter butzleri, Arcobacter cryaerophilus, and Arcobacter skirrowii. Results revealed that NRJ yielded 97.8% inclusivity and 100.0% exclusivity when evaluating against select bacterial strains found in foods. Our research group internally validated the novel chromogenic detection system by comparing its efficacy against the modified Houf reference method (HB). Method-performance evaluations determined the NRJ method was significantly more sensitive and specific than modified HB when isolating the three Arcobacter species from ground chicken samples. Furthermore, 16S amplicon sequencing data identified that greater than 97% of bacterial isolates recovered using the NRJ detection system were Arcobacter species. This thesis presents the development and validation of a new gold standard method for isolating these emerging pathogens in food, clinical and environmental sampling. Show less
