France: Campylobacter surveillance in 2021
In 2021, surveillance of Campylobacter infections confirmed the epidemiological and biological trends already observed in recent years. Specifically, the data shows:
a predominance of the species C. jejuni;
a higher number of cases and incidence in children with a maximum incidence in 0-9 year olds (27 cases/100,000 inhabitants);
a predominance of infections in men 15 cases per 100,000 inhabitants versus 11 cases per 100,000 for women (less marked trend in people aged 20 to 39);
a seasonal peak during the summer period;
high resistance to fluoroquinolones and tetracyclines, which has remained stable in recent years;
no notable increase in the resistance rates of the six antibiotics tested routinely;
consumption of poultry products as the first food (incriminated or suspected) identified as a source of contamination in episodes of collective food poisoning.
The number of Campylobacter strains listed by the CNR has been increasing since 2013, the year in which the network's laboratories introduced online data entry. By way of comparison, at European level, the trend in the number of Campylobacter infection notifications remained stable over the 2016-2020 period. This increase observed in France could be a reflection of a real increase in Campylobacter infections. However, several factors, such as the grouping of laboratories into technical platforms and the increasingly systematic use of multiplex PCR (diagnostic tests that allow the presence of several targeted pathogens to be tested at the same time from the same sample), facilitating the detection of Campylobacter sp, could have contributed to the increase in the number of strain isolations and therefore of the notification by the laboratories of the network over time.
