Presence of Salmonella spp. in one-day-old chicks from hatcheries in the metropolitan region of Fortaleza, Brazil

ABSTRACT

Background: Salmonellosis is caused by bacteria of the genus Salmonella and is a worldwide-considered major zoonosis with arisk for the public health due to the capacity of dissemination between animals and nature. In the poultry industry, day-old chicksmay acquire the infection at the hatchery through contact with fomites and eggshells with the presence of contaminated feces,favoring the animal infection and may become a source of infection to other birds in the lot, as well as to several other animals,including man. The aim of this study was to verify the presence of Salmonella spp. in one-day-old chicks from hatcheries in themetropolitan region of Fortaleza, Brazil.Materials, Methods & Results: A transversal study with a convenience sampling was performed in 510 day-old chicks acquiredfrom five hatcheries located in the metropolitan region of Fortaleza, Brazil. From each hatchery, 102 day-old chicks were analyzed at the Laboratory of Ornithological Studies (LABEO) of the State University of Ceará. Individual cloacal swab sampleswere collected immediately after arrival, following euthanasia by cervical dislocation for organ sampling, comprised of a poolof livers and yolk sacs of three birds per sample. Organ and cloacal samples were incubated in pre-enrichment using bufferedpeptone water 0.1%, following selective enrichment with the broths Tetrathionate, Rappaport-Vassiliadis and Selenite-Cystine.After incubation, samples were streaked in Brilliant Green agar added Novobiocin (40 µg/mL) and MacConkey agar. For all themicrobiological procedures, samples were incubated at 35 to 37°C for 18 to 24 h. Suspect colonies were identified by biochemical tests and confirmed with polyvalent O anti-Salmonella serum. Salmonella isolates were submitted to disk-diffusion method(Kirby-Bauer) following the National Committee for Clinical Laboratory Standards (NCCLS) guidelines. With the...(AU)