The Comparison Of Brucella Gel Agglutination Test With Other Serological Tests For The Diagnosis Of Brucellosis

Aim: Brucellosis, a zoonotic disease, may affect several body systems and cause various clinical manifestations considering the infection sites. Diagnosis of brucellosis is mainly based on culture and serological methods, specifically Rose Bengal agglutination (RBT) and standard tube agglutination tests (STA). When RBT, which is usually used as a screening method, is positive for Brucella antigens, STA is prefered to detect an agglutination titre by using serial dilutons of serum sample. On the otherhand, false negative results can be obtained by STA due to the presence of blocking antibodies. The refore, these two methods may be in adequate for diagnosis of Brucellosis. The aim of this study is to compare a novel method, Brucella Coombs gel test (BCGT) with other four serological methods, RBT, STA, Brucella immune-capture agglutination test (BCAP), and Brucella ELISA IgG, IgM tests. Patients and Methods: Serum samples taken from 100 patients, admitted from various clinics at Konya Training and Research Hospital were sent to the Medical Microbiology Laboratory with a clinical diagnosis of Brucellosis. Each serum sample was studied with RBT (Seromed Laboratory Products, Turkey), STA (Biomedica, Canada), BCAP (Brucellacapt, Vircell SD Spain), BCGT (ODAK, ISLAB, Turkey), and ELISA Brucella IgG, IgM (Euroimmune, Germany) methods. All procedures were carried out in accordance with the manufacturer’s recommendations. Results: The rates of positive results for each method were as follows: BCGT 88 (88.0%), RBT 74 (74.0%), STA 56 (56.0%), BCAP 84 (84.0%) and Brucella IgG, IgM test 92 (92.0%). Conclusion: Statistical analysis could not be executed due to lack of a gold standard method in the study. Yet, BCGT provided faster results than STA and BCAP methods because it does not require a 24-hourincubation. This novel test, BCGT, also showed an advantagein the diagnosis of Brucellosis because of detecting blocking antibodies. More comprehensive studies are needed to be performed to confirm the results.