الفهرس 
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Abstract
Clostridium perfringens is a saprozoonotic bacterium causing necrotic enteritis, significant mortality levels and loss of productivity in poultry ; while it causes food poisoning and watery diarrhea in humans as a result of consumption of contaminated poultry products with enterotoxigenic strains of C. perfringens. Therefore, the present study was carried out to investigate the prevalence and toxin genotyping of C. perfringens in poultry and their handlers at poultry farms and retail outlets in Sharkia Governorate. Also, antimicrobial susceptibility testing and rep-PCR genotyping of toxigenic C. perfringens as well as phylogenetic relationships of cpa genes in C. perfringens strains isolated from different sources were performed.
6.1. Prevalence of C. perfringens in poultry farms:-
The overall infection rate of C. perfringens was 77.3% (174 out of 225) in the examined poultry farms.
The overall prevalence of C. perfringens in the caecal contents of broiler chickens (82%, 41 out of 50) was significantly higher than that found in caecal contents of ducks (80.8%, 101/125) and layer chickens (64%, 32 out of 50).
C. perfringens distribution was non significantly higher (88%, 22 out of 25) in caecal contents of diseased broilers with symptoms of necrotic enteritis compared to that found in healthy broilers (76%, 19 out of 25).
Also, C. perfringens showed non significant higher distribution (73.3%, 11 out of 15) in caecal contents of diseased layers compared to (60%, 21/35) in apparently healthy ones.