Occurrence of Clostridium difficile in raw bovine,ovine,caprine,camel and buffalo milk in Iran [İran'da si{dotless}ǧi{dotless}r,koyun,keçi,deve ve manda çiǧ sütlerinde Clostridium difficile'nin tespiti]

This study was conducted to determine the prevalence of clostridium difficile in raw milk in iran. from january to august 2013,a total of 430 raw milk samples from bovine (n=135),ovine (n=100),caprine (n=80),buffalo (n=49) and camel (n=66) were purchased from randomly selected from 111 dairy farm in iran and were evaluated for the presence of c. difficile. in this study,only 2 of 135 bovine milk samples (1.43%) were contaminated with c. difficile. one of the two c. difficile strains was positive for tcda and tcdb toxin genes that was classified as ribotype 078. susceptibilities of isolates were determined for 11 antimicrobial drugs using the disk diffusion assay. none of the isolates was resistant to vancomycin,metronidazole,chloramphenicol and tetracycline. to our knowledge,this study is the first report of direct identification of c. difficile in bulk milk samples from dairy herds in iran and the first report of direct identification of c. difficile in bulk milk samples from dairy bovine herds.