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Journal of Clinical Microbiology, January 2003, p. 330-336, Vol. 41, No. 1
0095-1137/03/$08.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/JCM.41.1.330-336.2003
Copyright © 2003, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Evaluation of 11 PCR Assays for Species-Level Identification of Campylobacter jejuni and Campylobacter coli
Stephen L. W. On* and Penelope J. Jordan
Danish Veterinary Institute, Copenhagen, Denmark
Received 27 March 2002/
Returned for modification 15 July 2002/
Accepted 22 October 2002

ABSTRACT
We examined the sensitivity and specificity of 11 PCR assays
described for the species identification of
Campylobacter jejuni and
Campylobacter coli by using 111 type, reference, and field
strains of
C. jejuni,
C. coli, and
Campylobacter lari. For six
assays, an additional 21 type strains representing related
Campylobacter,
Arcobacter, and
Helicobacter species were also included. PCR
tests were initially established in the laboratory by optimizing
conditions with respect to five type and reference strains of
C. jejuni,
C. coli, and
C. lari. One PCR test for
C. coli failed
to give appropriate results during this initial setup phase
and was not evaluated further. The remaining 10 assays were
used to examine heated lysate and purified DNA templates as
appropriate of well-characterized type, reference, and field
strains of
C. jejuni (
n = 62),
C. coli (
n = 34), and
C. lari (
n = 15). The tests varied considerably in their sensitivity
and specificity for their respective target species. No assay
was found to be 100% sensitive and/or specific for all
C. jejuni strains tested, but four assays for
C. coli gave appropriate
responses for all strains examined. Between one and six strains
of
C. jejuni gave amplicons in four of seven
C. jejuni PCR tests
only where purified DNA was used as the template; corresponding
results were seen with one strain of
C. coli in each of three
assays for the latter species. Our findings indicate that a
polyphasic strategy for PCR-based identification should be used
to identify
C. jejuni and
C. coli strains. The data may assist
laboratories in selecting assays suited for their needs and
in designing evaluations of future PCR tests aimed to identify
these species.

INTRODUCTION
Campylobacter spp. are gram-negative, microaerophilic and/or
anaerobic, mainly spiral-shaped bacteria, most of which are
established or suspected human gastrointestinal pathogens (
28).
Of the 16 species and six subspecies currently known (
21),
Campylobacter jejuni and
Campylobacter coli are those most often isolated
from human diarrhea (
28). Most developed countries report
C. jejuni as predominant, but in other areas,
C. coli accounts
for up to 50% of human cases (
28). The main source of campylobacter
infections is considered contaminated foods, since the bacteria
are normal flora in animals such as poultry, pigs, and cattle.
The accurate identification of C. jejuni and C. coli provides important data for surveillance and risk assessment studies on which intervention strategies can be based. The principal hosts of C. jejuni and C. coli are widely regarded as poultry and pigs, respectively, but significant proportions of C. coli have been found in poultry (5), and genetically identical clones of C. jejuni have been observed in humans, cattle, and various animals living in the wild, as well as poultry (25, 26). In addition, rapid identification of C. coli may be useful clinically, since up to 68.4% of strains are resistant to erythromycin, the antibiotic of first choice for treatment of severe campylobacter infections (18).
Identification of campylobacters and related bacteria is well known to be problematic, principally because of their complex taxonomy, biochemical inertness, and fastidious growth requirements (20, 21). C. jejuni and C. coli are traditionally differentiated by the hippurate hydrolysis test, for which only C. jejuni gives a positive reaction. However, hippurate-negative strains of this species are well recognized (17, 36), and problems with false positive test results for non-C. jejuni species have also been described (5). Additional phenotypic characters, such as growth on a minimal medium and alpha-hemolytic activity, are useful but do not provide unequivocal discrimination, require stringent standardization, and are seldom used in routine laboratories (20). As a consequence, there has been considerable interest in the development of molecular identification methods for C. jejuni and C. coli.
PCR tests are considered especially attractive due to their relative ease of use, low cost, and potential application in large-scale screening programs by means of automated technologies (12). A wide range of PCR assays for C. jejuni and C. coli have been described, several of which are based on a variety of genes (e.g., 23S rRNA, ceuE, and mapA) (8, 9, 34) and others of which are derived from different randomly generated fragments (4, 32-33, 37) (see Table 1). The sensitivity and specificity of each PCR test have been examined, but the bases of the evaluations differed significantly, particularly with respect to the selection of strains of C. jejuni, C. coli, and Campylobacter lari, a group of species that are closely related by phylogenetic and genetic criteria (21). For example, one study included the reference strains used to establish an international serotyping scheme for C. jejuni and C. coli (13), another tested six C. jejuni strains and one C. coli strain but no C. lari isolates (4), and one was evaluated solely in the context of a specific taxonomic investigation (38). In addition, only one (13) appears to have been applied to hippurate-negative C. jejuni strains. The differences in the numbers and choices of strains used to evaluate the PCR tests make an objective comparison of their efficacy difficult.
In this study, we investigated the sensitivity and specificity
of 11 PCR assays for identifying
C. jejuni and
C. coli, mainly
by use of 111 well-characterized strains of the most closely
related species
C. jejuni,
C. coli, and
C. lari.
(Preliminary results from this study were presented in the abstracts of the 11th International Workshop for Campylobacter, Helicobacter and Related Organisms, 2 to 4 Sept. 2001, Freiburg, Germany [S. L. W. On, Int. J. Med. Microbiol. 291{Suppl. 31}:106, abstr. L-10].)

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Study design.
Six PCR tests for
C. jejuni (
4,
8,
9,
13,
32,
34), four for
C. coli (
8,
9,
13,
33), and a multiplex assay designed for concurrent
identification and differentiation of both species (
38) were
examined. For initial PCR setup, all primers and PCR cycling
conditions as specified by the respective authors were first
examined for their ability to obtain appropriate results with
purified DNA template from
C. jejuni CCUG 11284
T and CCUG 10958,
C. coli CCUG 11283
T and CCUG 24865, and
C. lari CCUG 23947
T.
The specified reaction conditions were modified by altering
key variables (primer annealing temperature, concentration of
MgCl
2, concentration of
Taq polymerase) only where appropriate
results were not obtained. Details of the PCR assay variables
finally used are given in Table
1. Optimized PCR assays were
then applied to heated lysates of 111 strains of
C. jejuni,
C. coli, and
C. lari (see Tables
2 and
3). Strains giving inappropriate
results were reexamined by use of the original heated lysate
and also purified DNA. For selected
C. jejuni (
13,
38) and
C. coli (
9,
13,
33,
38) assays, specificity was reexamined by use
of purified DNA extracts from the type strains of related taxa;
Campylobacter concisus,
Campylobacter curvus,
Campylobacter fetus subsp.
fetus,
Campylobacter fetus subsp.
venerealis,
Campylobacter gracilis,
Campylobacter helveticus,
Campylobacter hominis,
Campylobacter hyointestinalis subsp.
hyointestinalis,
Campylobacter hyointestinalis subsp.
lawsonii,
Campylobacter lanienae,
Campylobacter mucosalis,
Campylobacter rectus,
Campylobacter showae,
Campylobacter sputorum,
Campylobacter upsaliensis,
Arcobacter butzleri,
Arcobacter cryaerophilus,
Arcobacter nitrofigilis,
Arcobacter skirrowii,
Helicobacter pametensis, and
Helicobacter pullorum.
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TABLE 2. C. jejuni, C. coli, and C. lari strains giving appropriate (species-specific) results in all 10 PCR tests subjected to full evaluation
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TABLE 3. Strains for which PCR tests failed to give appropriate results and summary of the sensitivity and specificity of each PCR
|
Bacterial strains.
Tables
2 and
3 list the 57
C. jejuni subsp.
jejuni, 5
C. jejuni subsp.
doylei, 34
C. coli, and 15
C. lari strains used. Of these,
81 are reference strains from international culture collections.
The identities of the remaining strains (including hippurate-negative
or variable
C. jejuni subsp.
jejuni) were verified in previous
studies, mainly involving DNA-DNA hybridization and/or amplified
fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) technologies (
17,
22-
23,
31,
36-
38).
Preparation of heated lysate and purified DNA templates.
Diluted (1:10 in purified distilled water) heated lysates (24) and purified DNA samples (11) from the bacterial strains used here were prepared as described previously. Where purified DNA was employed as the template for the PCR assays described by Gonzalez et al. (9), 100 ng was used per the authors' instructions.
PCR assay conditions.
All PCRs were performed in 50-µl volumes containing 5 µl of 10x PCR buffer (N808-0171; Applied Biosystems, Foster City, Calif.), 0.5 µl of each PCR primer (final concentration, 130 µg/ml; DNA Technology A/S, Aarhus, Denmark), 0.5 µl of deoxynucleoside triphosphate mix (final concentration, 1 mM; Amersham Pharmacia Biotech, Hørsholm, Denmark), and 2.0 µl of template. Volumes of DNA polymerase (AmpliTaq; Applied Biosystems), MgCl2 (Applied Biosystems), and DNA-free purified water were used as appropriate to each assay (Table 1). Reaction mixtures were then overlaid with 1 µl of sterile mineral oil and heated for 5 min at 94°C as an initial denaturation step. PCR was then performed using the cycling conditions specified by the original authors of the respective works, with amendments to the annealing temperature as specified in Table 1. All assays were terminated with a 5-min extension period of 72°C and were performed with Trio Biometra 20 thermocyclers (Biometra, Göttingen, Germany), the efficacy of which was regularly tested by in-house quality assurance procedures (10). Amplicons were detected by ethidium bromide staining of electrophoresed samples as described previously (24).

RESULTS
Initial PCR setup.
Appropriate results in terms of species specificity and amplicon
size for 10 of the 11 PCR assays examined for the five type
and reference strains used were successfully obtained. Most
assays required some alteration to one or more of the specified
reaction variables to obtain suitable results (Table
1). The
23S rRNA-based PCR test for
C. coli (
8) consistently gave amplicons
with the strains of
C. jejuni and
C. lari during the initial
setup phase, despite extensive testing (Fig.
1). Table
1 shows
the range of different variable parameters used in various combinations
in attempts to establish the assay. Consequently, this PCR was
not evaluated further. No amplicon was obtained with any of
the 21 related
Campylobacter,
Arcobacter, or
Helicobacter taxa
in five assays reexamined for species specificity (
9,
13,
33,
38).
Sensitivity and specificity of PCR tests by evaluation with 111 C. jejuni, C. coli, and C. lari strains.
Table
2 lists the strains for which accurate results in all
PCR tests evaluated were obtained. Table
3 gives the results
for strains for which PCR tests failed in their accuracy and
summarizes the sensitivity (percentage of strains of the correct
species identified) and specificity (100 - percentage of strains
of the nontarget species giving a reaction) of each assay. For
the latter, only consistent results obtained from analyses performed
on heated lysates and subsequently on purified DNA were considered.
All assays tested for identification of
C. coli proved both
100% specific and sensitive, although three tests gave amplicons
of strains of CCUG 11283 or CDC D145 only when purified DNA
was used as the template (Table
2).
The performance of C. jejuni PCR assays varied considerably. Test specificity varied from 84 to 100%, and test sensitivity ranged from 88 to 100%. No test proved 100% accurate; tests that yielded amplicons from all C. jejuni strains proved to be the least specific (Table 3). Conversely, the two assays found to be 100% specific for C. jejuni (13, 38), respectively, detected 91 and 93% of strains of this species. Strains of C. jejuni subsp. doylei contributed significantly to the failure rate of these and two other PCR tests intended to identify C. jejuni; one test derived from an arbitrarily primed PCR product (4) failed to react with a single strain of this taxon (Table 3). In addition, there was an increased proportion of C. jejuni identification assays for which heated lysates did not serve as a suitable reaction template (Tables 2 and 3). Moreover, the use of heated lysate frequently (46% of C. jejuni strains examined) gave rise to additional PCR products of a lower molecular weight than the intended amplicon in one assay (9). These results were obtained with only four strains (7%) when purified DNA of the concentration recommended by these authors was employed as the reaction template. Results obtained with the PCR assay targeting the 23S rRNA gene (8) were noteworthy in that the molecular size of the amplicon in 14 strains of C. jejuni varied between the limits originally described (8); in two strains, two distinct products were observed. Representative results are shown in Fig. 1.

DISCUSSION
We observed considerable variation in the performance of 11
previously described PCR assays for identifying
C. jejuni and
C. coli. Both physicochemical (i.e., relating to the PCR) and
biological (i.e., relating to the diversity of
Campylobacter)
factors account for this variability.
The quality of the template used for PCR is crucial to the reaction (10). Purified DNA can be regarded as the "gold standard" template for bacterial identification, but for busy routine laboratories the use of simple heated lysates is clearly advantageous. In general, the PCR tests examined here performed well when heated lysates were used, but in several cases amplicons were obtained only with purified DNA. Several factors may explain our results. Some Campylobacter strains do not release PCR-detectable DNA when boiled (16); the fact that PCR tests were not affected equally may reflect differences in the copy number and/or stability of each genetic marker. In addition, some PCR primers are affected more markedly than others by impurities present in crude DNA preparations (7, 27). The fact that nonspecific PCR products were frequently seen in one assay (9) when heated lysate was used as the template but rarely when purified DNA was used may exemplify the influence of high DNA concentrations in heated lysates, which cause some PCR primers to misprime (2). Under such conditions, total inhibition of the PCR can also occur (2, 10).
Many factors apart from template quality can affect the efficacy of PCR, including source and type of DNA polymerase used, thermal cycler specification, and reaction buffer composition (1, 7, 15). Thus, stringent optimization procedures are recommended for implementation of a given PCR test (7, 10). We optimized 10 of 11 PCR tests under conditions concordant with recommended quality control procedures (10). Nonetheless, given the variables that can influence PCR test efficacy, in the hands of the original developers each PCR assay may perform satisfactorily. However, if such conditions cannot be easily reproduced, portability quickly becomes crucial.
In addition to technical factors contributing to the compromised sensitivity and specificity of certain PCR tests, a biological element is highly likely. Campylobacter is a taxonomically complex genus (21), and both C. jejuni and C. lari are genetically diverse species (6, 19, 21, 23). The finding that four of five PCR tests for identification of C. coli are effective may reflect the implication from AFLP analyses that this species appears to be comparatively homogeneous at the DNA level (6, 23). Our failure to obtain specific results for the C. coli PCR targeting the 23S rRNA gene resembles problems experienced by others (14) and may reflect the high level of conservation in the rRNA operon among closely related species (21).
C. jejuni comprises two genetically distinct but highly related subspecies, C. jejuni subsp. jejuni and C. jejuni subsp. doylei. Since the latter has no known animal reservoir and is infrequently observed in human disease, most attention is focused on C. jejuni subsp. jejuni, and most tests evaluated here were not originally used to examine C. jejuni subsp. doylei strains. The inability of many C. jejuni PCR tests to recognize strains of the latter taxon suggests that the genetic difference between the two subspecies (23, 30) contributes to PCR failure. Furthermore, genetic heterogeneity in C. jejuni subsp. jejuni can arise from various phenomena (19, 22, 35) that can affect the efficacy of a PCR if such change occurs within one or both of the binding sites (20). Mutation in hipO (29) has previously been identified as a source of failure for the PCR assay targeting that gene (13) and for a PCR based on ureC to identify the related organism Helicobacter pylori (3). Some of the negative PCR results we observed probably arose from the natural genetic diversity of C. jejuni. Such population variance is also demonstrated in our results for the C. jejuni subsp. jejuni PCR targeting the 23S rRNA gene (8). Amplicon size variation was also observed among the few strains of C. coli that gave a positive result with this assay (Fig. 1 and Table 3). The wide variation in distribution and sequence of intervening sequences in rRNA genes of C. jejuni and C. coli (37) and related bacteria, including interoperon differences, is now well established, and the effects and implications of intervening sequences for PCR tests have been discussed (21).
Our reexamination of the specificity of the five most accurate PCR tests by use of type strains of 21 related Campylobacter, Arcobacter, and Helicobacter species concurred with results obtained by the original authors (9, 13, 33, 38), emphasizing that more problems are encountered with accurate discrimination of closely related taxa. Our results endorse the use of a strain collection that adequately reflects the diversity and taxonomy of the target species to validate PCR assays. It is noteworthy that two of the PCR assays examined here that were readily established in our laboratory and yielded accurate results were first developed by testing with an extensive reference strain collection (13). Our data also support a polyphasic approach for identification of campylobacters (20), since no single PCR test identified all C. jejuni strains. Suspect C. jejuni subsp. doylei isolates should be confirmed by examining for their inability to reduce nitrate (30) or by alternative genetic methods such as AFLP fingerprinting (23). We now routinely use the multiplex PCR for concurrent identification and discrimination of C. jejuni and C. coli (38) as a first-line identification method and specific assays for these two species (13) as required. We hope the results of this study will assist others in selecting C. jejuni and C. coli PCR assays for their use.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank Enevold Falsen (Culture Collection, University of Göteborg,
Göteborg, Sweden), Peter Vandamme (University of Ghent,
Ghent, Belgium), Collette Fitzgerald (University of Lancaster,
Lancaster, United Kingdom), and Bala Swaminathan and Mavis Nicholson
(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Ga.) for
supplying bacterial strains used in this study. We also thank
Jeffrey Hoorfar (Danish Veterinary Institute) and Alex van Belkum
(Erasmus University Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands)
for useful discussions.

FOOTNOTES
* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Danish Veterinary Institute, Bülowsvej 27, DK-1790 Copenhagen V, Denmark. Phone: 45 35 30 02 59. Fax: 45 35 30 01 20. E-mail:
sto{at}vetinst.dk.


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Journal of Clinical Microbiology, January 2003, p. 330-336, Vol. 41, No. 1
0095-1137/03/$08.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/JCM.41.1.330-336.2003
Copyright © 2003, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
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