1987 Volume 42 Issue 2 Pages 499-512
A serogrouping scheme for Campylobacter jejuni based on the slide agglutination technique with formalin-treated cells was developed.
Cross-agglutination experiments between autoclaved (at 121C for 120min) cells prepared from six different strains of various souces and their antisera demonstrated no remarkable immunological specificity among the strains. While, the experiments using formalin-treated cells of various strains and their respective antisera revealed remarkable specificities among them, i.e., each of these antisera showed the highest agglutination titer against the homologous antigen, and cross reactions with heterologous antigens were weak, if any, even when unabsorbed antisera were examined. The cross reactions were removed by absorption. These results indicate that this organism has at least two kinds of antigenic factors, heat-stable and relatively heat-labile. The latter antigenic factor (s) responsible for agglutination in the system using formalin-treated antigen were not completly inactivated by heating at 100C for 60min.
Thus, agglutination tests using formalin-treated antigens and their corresponding antisera were found to be a useful tool for serological grouping of this organism, and the slide agglutination technique was satisfactory for routine use. By this system, 33 serogroups, numbered from TCK 1-TCK33, have been identified.
With these single grouping antisera, 1, 768 of 2, 305 or 77% of C. jejuni isolates from human gastroenteritis cases and 455 of 767 or 59% of those from animal sources were found typable; 6.3% of the human isolates and 3.7% of the animal isolates reacted with two or more grouping sera. The other 15% of the former and 37% of the latter were untypable, not reacting with any of the grouping sera. They are under further investigation.
In a family outbreak, the serogroup of the isolates from patients coincided with that from the food incriminated epidemiologically as a common vehicle. In most of the community outbreaks studied, good serological correlation of the isolates was observed.
The serogrouping system of C. jejuni by slide agglutination with formalin-treated cells is of great value in the studies of epidemiology of C. jejuni gastroenteritis and ecology of the organism.
