*Correspondence to Author: Dimitrios Papadopoulos Department of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, School of Health Sciences, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece How to cite this article: Dimitrios Papadopoulos, Evanthia Petridou,Georgios Filioussis, Theo- filos Papadopoulos, Konstantinos Papageorgiou, Maria Chatzistilia- nou, Spyridon K. Kritas.Prevalence and antibiotic resistance of Cam- pylobacter coli and Campylobacter jejuni in Greek swine farms. Amer- ican Journal of Microbiology and Immunology, 2020 5:6 eSciPub LLC, Houston, TX USA. Website: http://escipub.com/ Dimitrios Papadopoulos et al., AJMI, 2020, 5:6 American Journal of Microbiology and Immunology (ISSN: 2474-2910) Research Article AJMI 2020 5:6 Prevalence and antibiotic resistance of Campylobacter coli and Campylobacter jejuni in Greek swine farms Campylobacter species are one of four key global causes of human di- arrheal diseases, according to W.H.O. It is considered to be the most common bacterial cause of human gastroenteritis in the world. The ob- jective of this study was to estimate the prevalence of Campylobacter coli (C. coli) and Campylobacter jejuni (C. jejuni) in Greek commercial swine farms, and describe the antimicrobial resistance of the isolated strains. A total of 1,000 rectal swabs (50 per farm) were collected from twenty swine farms in Greece. Ten rectal samples had been randomly collected from each of fve age-groups (suckling piglets, nursery pigs, grower pigs, fnisher pigs, sows). Isolation of Campylobacter spp. was performed using the ISO 10272-1:2017. A PCR method, based on the amplifcation of mapA C.jejuni and ceuE C.coli specifc genes, was used for identifcation of the isolated strains. All isolates were tested for their susceptibility against gentamycin, erythromycin, ciprofoxacin, tetracy- cline and meropenem; EUCAST guidelines were used for the interpre- tation. The results showed that 16 out of the 20 farms (80%) and 491 (49%) of the samples were positive for Campylobacter spp. Preva- lence of C.coli was 38% (95% CI 35.1-41.1) and of C.jejuni 10.9% (95% CI 9,1-13.0). Sows were 1.4 times more likely to be colonized by Cam- pylobacter spp than sucking piglets (p<0.05) while nursery and grow- er pigs were 2.14 and 2 times more likely to be colonized than sows p<0.001). However, colonization was not associated with farm size. High rates of resistance were recorded for tetracycline (67,3%), while 18,1%, 7,3% and 3.9% of the isolates were resistant in ciprofoxacin, erythromycin and gentamycin respectively. Thirty-two of the isolates (6,52%) were classifed as multidrug resistant; resistance to meropen- em was not found. Our fndings indicate high prevalence of C.coli and C.jejuni in Greek pig farms with high resistant rates to tetracycline and ciprofoxacin; this constitutes a potential reservoir for resistance genes spread to the community. Keywords: Campylobacter , Antimicrobial Resistance, Minimum Inhib- itory Concentration (MIC), Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing (AST), pigs, zoonosis Dimitrios Papadopoulos 1 , Evanthia Petridou 1 , (†) Georgios Filioussis 1 , Theofilos Papadopoulos 1 , Konstantinos Papageorgiou 1 , Maria Chatzistilianou 2 , Spyridon K. Kritas 1 1 Department of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, School of Health Sciences, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece; 2 Clinic of Pediatrics- Immunology and Infectious Disease, Faculty of Medicine, School of Health Sciences, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece ABSTRACT AJMI: http://escipub.com/american-journal-of-microbiology-and-immunology/ 1