Anais do Simpósio Latino Americano de Ciências de Alimentos
Anais do 14 SLACA - Simpósio Latino Americano de Ciência de Alimentos

Chicken meat and raw eggs are the main source of Salmonella spp which causes food disease outbreaks worldwide. Salmonella pathogenicity can be expressed from genes encoding virulence factors, which represents the microorganism's capacity for invasion, survival, replication, and colonization in host cells. The flgK, fljB and flgL genes are responsible for producing flagellar proteins, which facilitates the locomotion of the pathogen. tolC gene recognize and invade the host cell and spvB gene is able to increase bacterial growth in host cells and affect the host immune system. The Serotyping of Salmonella is important to monitore its infections. The objective of the present study was to analyze the presence of five genes that encode virulence factors and identify the serotypes in a total of 236 strains of Salmonella sp. isolated from chicken carcasses from 1999 to 2018. The isolates were tested using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique to detect the virulence genes. The products were subjected to electrophoresis in a 1.5% agarose gel and the serotyping of the isolates was performed by Adolfo Lutz Institute. The tolC gene was found in 100% of the strains, followed by fljB (99.6%), flgK (97.9%) and flgL (88.6%). The spvB gene was present in 81 strains, considered the least frequent gene (34.3%). The most isolated serotypes were S. Enteritidis (69 isolates/29.20%) and S. Ohio (46/19.5%). The others serotypes were: S. Heidelberg (25/11%); S. Typhimurium (22/9.2%); S. Agona (14/5.9%); S. Mbandaka (13/5.5%); S. Anatum (8/3.4%); S. Infantis and S. Worthington (4/1.7%); S. Kentucky and S. Bredeney (3/1.3%); S. Cubana (2/0,8%); S. Orion, S. Brandenburg, S. Tennessee, S. Abony, S. Saintpaul and S. Schwarzengrund (1/0.4%). It wasn’t possible to serotype 13 strains. All strains studied were considered capable of demonstrating their high pathogenic potential, which reinforces the possibility of triggering infections in humans.