REGULAR ARTICLES Prevalence, virulence attributes, and antibiogram of Bordetella avium isolated from turkeys in Egypt Walaa Fathy Saad Eldin 1 & Lammah K. Abd-El Samie 1 & Wageh Sobhy Darwish 2,3 & Yaser Hosny A. Elewa 4 Received: 23 November 2018 /Accepted: 24 July 2019 # Springer Nature B.V. 2019 Abstract Turkey coryza is a major respiratory disease caused by Bordetella avium (B. avium). It occurs in all ages of turkeys and is characterized by high morbidity and low mortality rates. The present study aimed firstly at determination of the prevalence rates of B. avium in turkeys reared in Egypt at different ages using various diagnostic methods including clinical examination, histopathology, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), bacterial culture, and polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Using PCR, virulence-associated genes were detected in the confirmed B. avium isolates. Furthermore, the antibiotic resistance profiles of the confirmed B. avium isolates were examined. The achieved results indicated isolation and identification of B. avium infection at different ages of turkeys reared in Egypt. The overall PCR-confirmed prevalence rate of B. avium was 22.95%. The identified B. avium strains harbored virulence-associated genes responsible for colonization in the respiratory tract of turkeys including Bordetella virulence gene (100%), fimbriae (71.14%), and filamentous hemagglutinin (85.68%). The isolated B. avium strains showed multidrug resistance profiles. B. avium isolates were resistant to penicillin (92.82%), ceftiofur (85.68%), nalidixic acid (78.54%), and lincomycin (71.40%). The identified B. avium strains showed clear sensitivities to both gentamicin and neomycin, suggesting these as possible antimicrobial candidates for the control of B. avium infection in turkeys. Keywords Bordetella avium . Coryza . Turkeys . Drug resistance . Egypt Introduction Bordetella avium (B. avium) is responsible for a highly con- tagious respiratory disease in different avian species, particu- larly in turkeys, named avian bordetellosis or turkey coryza. This disease is characterized by high morbidities and low mortalities. B. avium can infect all ages of turkeys causing significant reduction in the feed conversion ratio and subse- quently high economic losses in the poultry industry (Jackwood and Saif 2003). Infectious coryza is often regarded as a curse for poultry farmers when it occurs concurrently with several pathogens causing swollen head syndrome (Balouria et al. 2019). B. avium ranked third in the challenging diseases for the US turkey industry (Beach et al. 2012). Exposure of turkeys to several environmental and management stressors is a predisposing factor in the spread of the bacterial diseases of turkeys including B. avium (Bartz et al. 2018). Infectious coryza is reported to be milder in chicken than in turkey poults. Typical clinical signs of coryza in turkeys were limited to respiratory tract including sneezing, cough, nasal dis- charge, eye discharge, and submaxillary edema, the course of the disease is about 2–4 weeks. Postmortem lesions include bronchitis, air sacculitis, pneumonia, and inflammation of the trachea with exudates in the nasal cavity and trachea with no lesions in the visceral organs except for complicated cases with secondary bacterial and viral infections (Jackwood and Saif 2003). Wildlife birds may act as reservoirs for B. avium (Stenzel et al. 2017). Despite the unexpected similarities be- tween B. avium and B. pertussis that causes a respiratory disease in humans, there is no concrete proof about zoonotic importance of B. avium (Gentry-Weeks et al. 1988; Spears et al. 2003). * Wageh Sobhy Darwish wagehdarwish@yahoo.ca; wagehdarwish@zu.edu.eg 1 Educational Veterinary Hospital, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Zagazig University, Zagazig 44519, Egypt 2 Food Control Department, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Zagazig University, Zagazig 44519, Egypt 3 Laboratory of Advanced Lipid Analysis, Faculty of Health Sciences, Hokkaido University, Sapporo 060-0812, Japan 4 Department of Histology, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Zagazig University, Zagazig 44519, Egypt Tropical Animal Health and Production https://doi.org/10.1007/s11250-019-02027-5