Campylobacter in recreational lake water in southern
Quebec, Canada: presence, concentration, and association
with precipitation and ruminant farm proximity
Rebecca A. Guy, Julie Arsenault, Serge Olivier Kotchi,
Maxime Gosselin-Théberge, Marie-Josée Champagne
and Philippe Berthiaume
ABSTRACT
Campylobacter is an important cause of gastrointestinal illness and exposure to recreational water is
one potential source of infection. The objective of this study was to investigate the presence and
concentrations of Campylobacter, and determine the influence of agricultural activities and
precipitation on their presence, at lake beaches used for water recreation in southern Quebec,
Canada. A total of 413 water samples were collected from June to August, from 22 beaches, between
2011 and 2013. The overall proportion of positive water samples was estimated to be 33.9%
(95% CI: 27.7, 40.1) for C. jejuni and 49.7% (95% CI: 41.8, 57.6) for Campylobacter spp.
The concentrations of both thermotolerant Campylobacter spp. and C. jejuni ranged from 20 to 900
bacteria/L of water. Logistic regressions showed that the presence of C. jejuni and Campylobacter spp.
was significantly associated with the year and season. Other significant predictors of C. jejuni, but not
Campylobacter spp., included the presence of precipitation the day before sampling and the presence
of ruminant farms within a 5 km radius of the beach. The present study provides insights into the risk
of Campylobacter presence in recreational lake water for better understanding public health risks.
Rebecca A. Guy (corresponding author)
Serge Olivier Kotchi
Maxime Gosselin-Théberge
Marie-Josée Champagne
Philippe Berthiaume
National Microbiology Laboratory,
Public Health Agency of Canada,
Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec,
Canada
E-mail: rebecca.guy@canada.ca
Rebecca A. Guy
Julie Arsenault
Maxime Gosselin-Théberge
Department of Pathology and Microbiology,
Faculty of Veterinary Medicine,
Université de Montréal,
Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec,
Canada
Key words | agriculture, Campylobacter, real-time polymerase chain reaction, recreational lake
water, remote sensing, ruminant
INTRODUCTION
Campylobacter is the leading cause of bacterial gastroenter-
itis in industrialized countries and is the leading notifiable
enteric disease in Canada. Poultry is recognized as the
main reservoir for Campylobacter, and numerous epidemio-
logical studies have highlighted that consumption of
undercooked poultry meat, or food cross-contaminated by
this product, is an important source of human infection.
However, other animal species can also be healthy carriers
of Campylobacter, including cattle, pets, wild birds and wild
mammals (Huang et al. ; Kaakoush et al. ). Contact
with these animals, directly or indirectly through a contami-
nated environment, represents another potential source of
human exposure to the bacteria. In Quebec, this is sup-
ported by a study conducted in the Eastern Townships,
reporting that exposures to poultry account for less than
half the episodes of campylobacteriosis in the region
(Michaud et al. ).
Among the various environmental sources of Campylo-
bacter, water has been identified as an effective and
probably underestimated vehicle of transmission (Kaakoush
et al. ). The report of Campylobacter as one of the top
six causes of drinking water outbreaks in Canada (Schuster
et al. ) supports this notion. Moreover, drinking undisin-
fected water and swimming in recreational water have been
516 © IWA Publishing 2018 Journal of Water and Health | 16.4 | 2018
doi: 10.2166/wh.2018.222
Downloaded from https://iwaponline.com/jwh/article-pdf/16/4/516/372227/jwh0160516.pdf
by guest
on 05 June 2020