Detecção de Campylobacter jejuni em produtos de frango utilizando separação imunomagnética

Abstract

Campylobacter is an important pathogenic microorganism, involved in a large number of foodborne disease cases. Several methodologies have been developed in order to improve their detection and isolation. This is a dissertation about the study of detection of C. jejuni in chicken products using immunomagnetic separation. In the beginning comparative analysis were carried out with different conventional methodologies often used for C. jejuni detection in order to asses which one was more effective. Contaminated chicken meat samples were experimentally used with a known C. jejuni population and it was observed if the techniques tested were capable of detecting the presence of this microorganism. Afterwards, it was developed a new diagnosis technique using immunomagnetic separation, which was tested if face to artificial and naturally contaminated samples. Magnetic microparticles were connected to anti-C. jejuni polyclonal antibodies, which were used after the stage of enrichment to connect to the cells of C. jejuni and, with the use of magnetic separator, concentrate them for later plating in agar. It was possible to observe that, when pre-enriched means were used, there was improvement in the detection of solid means. The immunomagnetic separation has presented bigger sensibility in the isolation of C. jejuni of samples of chicken food than the conventional method. The technique of immunomagnetic separation can be used for isolation of C. jejuni of chicken products, offering the advantages of detecting the microorganism in samples from which the isolation is not obtained with the use of conventional method.