PRIMARY SWINE INTESTINAL-CELLS AS A MODEL FOR STUDYING CAMPYLOBACTER-JEJUNI INVASIVENESS

Swine small-intestinal enterocytes were used to test the invasiveness of Campylobacter jejuni. The cells were removed from the small intesti nes of 6-h-old piglets by enzymatic digestion. Two clinical C. jejuni isolates invaded swine enterocytes at significantly higher frequencies than an Escherichia coli control strain. The recovered colonies of C. jejuni T13192 appeared to be highly mucoid and invaded tissue culture cells (INT 407) at higher frequency (0.14%) than the parental strain (0.003%). The data not only support the previous in vitro findings reg arding the invasiveness of C. jejuni but also suggest that invasivenes s of C. jejuni may be an in vivo virulence attribute.