Isolating Clostridium perfringens from chickens and determining its virulence factors

Abstract

In this research, 497 fecal samples from the chickens, including 231 samples from the suspected chickens suffering with necrotic enteritis and 266 samples from the healthy chickens were collected for isolating Clostridium perfringens. The studied results showed that the prevalence of C. perfringens in the suspected and healthy chickens were 58% and 24.06%, respectively. The results of toxin type determination, using Multiplex-PCR, proved that all of the 198 C. perfringens strains belonged to type A. Among 134 C. perfringens strains isolated from the diseased chickens, 39 (29.10%) strains harbored netB gene, 3 (2.24%) strains carried cpe gene, and 1 (0.74%) strain had netB and cpe gene. The percentages of C. perfringens strains carried netB and cpe genes among 64 trains isolated from the healthy chickens were 26.57% (17/64) and 1.56% (1/64), respectively. Experimental infection for the chickens at 28 days old with the field C. perfringens strains was carried out. The infected chickens
showed the symtoms and lesions as described in the previous documents