Reducing Salmonella horizontal transmission during egg incubation by phage therapy.

Abstract Salmonella is a serious problem for both animal production and public health worldwide. Contaminated poultry is the main vehicle of Salmonella and the most important serotype is Salmonella enterica serovar Enteritidis. In order to test the efficiency of bacteriophages to treat Salmonella enterica serovar Enteritidis infections in poultry, a cocktail of two phages, F1055S and F12013S, isolated from chicken litter was applied by aerosol spray on fertile eggs challenged with Salmonella Enteritidis. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first experiment in which phages were applied by spray on fertile eggs. Two groups of eggs were challenged with Salmonella (3×108 colony-forming units [CFU]/mL) and one of them was treated with the phage suspension (2×106 plaque-forming units [PFU]/mL). A third group was used as nonchallenged and nontreated control. The phage treatment of challenged Salmonella eggs reduced the disease symptoms in the chicks. The arthritis and pasting after 8 days in the challenged...