Abstract:

OBJECTIVE: Brucellosis is extremely infectious zoonosis caused by the Gram-negative bacteria of the genus Brucella. Several serological tests have been used for the diagnosis of human brucellosis. Although standard tube agglutination test is the frequently preferred method for the serodiagnosis of brucellosis, it may cause false negative results due to its incompetence in detecting the blocking antibodies. In this study, analysis of the results obtained with two different tests which are Rose Bengal test (RBT) and immunocapture- agglutination test (Brucellacapt) for detection of Brucella-specific antibodies in an area of endemicity and evaluation of usefulness of these tests were aimed. METHODS: Atotal of 220 sera from different groups of patients from various polyclinics were included the study between August 2009 and August 2011 dates. Rose Bengal test (ADR Diagnostics, MedicoChemistry) and Brucellacapt (ADR Diagnostics, Medico- Chemistry) were performed for each serum sample. Both of the tests were performed according to manufacturer's recommendations. The threshold serum titre was accepted as 1/160 in Brucellacapt test. In this study, 220 patients with suspected brucellosis based on clinical findings were included. RESULTS: As a result of Serological examination of the clinical samples both of the RBT and Brucellacapt tests were negative in 146 (66.4%) patients. Both of the RBT and Brucellacapt tests were positive in 59 (26.8%) patients. In addition, only RBTwas positive in 9 (4.1%) patients and only Brucellacapt test was positive in 6 (2.7%) patients. Totally, RBT was positive in 68 patients (30.9%) and Brucellacapt test was positive in 65 patients (29.5%). CONCLUSION: Brucellosis continues to be an endemic problem in our region. RBTis a very useful test for the diagnosis of human brucellosis and hasn't got technical difficulties since they didn't require skilled personnel and high-cost material and easy to interpret. Brucellacapt is also simple and practical test and it is suitable complementary test for diagnosis of brucellosis.

Keywords: