Monitoring within-farm transmission dynamics of antimicrobial-resistant Campylobacter in dairy cattle using broth microdilution and long-read whole genome sequencing

Campylobacter jejuni and Campylobacter coli are important foodborne zoonotic pathogens and cause for concern due to the increasing trend in antimicrobial resistance. A long-run surveillance study was conducted in animals from different age groups in five dairy cattle farms to investigate the within-farm diversity and transmission dynamics of resistant Campylobacter throughout time. The resistance phenotype of the circulating isolates (170 C. jejuni and 37 C. coli) was determined by broth microdilution and a selection of 56 isolates were whole genome sequenced using the Oxford-Nanopore long-fragment sequencing technology resulting in completely resolved and circularized genomes (both chromosomes and plasmids). C. jejuni was isolated from all farms while C. coli was isolated from only two farms, but resistance rates were higher in C. coli than in C. jejuni and in calves than in adult animals. Some genotypes (e.g. ST-48, gyrA_T86I/tet(O)/bla(OXA-61) in farm F1; ST-12000, aadE-Cc/tet(O)/bla(OXA-489) in F4) persisted throughout the study while others were only sporadically detected. Acquisition of extracellular genes from other isolates and intracellular mutational events were identified as the processes that led to the emergence of the resistant genotypes that spread within the herds. Monitoring with Oxford Nanopore Technologies sequencing helped to decipher the complex molecular epidemiology underlying the within-farm dissemination of resistant Campylobacter.