Campylobacter infections

Abstract

Campylobacters are slender, spiral or curved, micro-aerophilic gram-negative rods that are one of the most commonly reported bacterial causes of diarrhea in the developing and developed world. Campylobacters also may cause systemic illness in humans and a number of diseases in wild and domestic animals. Because of morphological similarity with vibrios, these organisms were originally classified as Vibrio fetus.(1) Campylobacter (Greek for curved rod) was proposed as a name of a new genus when it was found that these organisms differed in their biochemical characteristics from true members of the genus Vibrio. C. jejuni is now regarded as among the leading causes of diarrheal disease in humans. The complete genomic sequence of C. jejuni was characterized in 2000. © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009.