Comprehensive approaches for diagnosis of human brucellosis

Brucellosis is both occupational and non-occupational infectious disease which occurs due to contact with infected animals and contaminated animal products. The disease is invariably under-diagnosed, likely because of misleading clinical presentation. Hence, timely and accurate diagnosis is essential for prompt treatment and faster recovery of the patient. To enableanearly and accurate Brucella detection, cultural, serological and molecular diagnostic techniques were carried out. Out of 219 serum samples, 75.3% and 24.7% were males and females respectively, 66, 99 and 54 were veterinary professionals, animal handlers and other suspected cases, respectively. In different diagnostic tests that were employed, 53 (24.20%), 32 (14.61%), 14 (6.39%) and 4 (1.83%) were positive by IgGELISA, RBPT, PCR and IgM ELISA respectively, in the descending order of positivity. Out of 32 RBPT positive samples, 18 (56.25%) samples showed significant titres by STAT. From the same RBPT positive samples, B. abortus and B. melitensis were isolated and confirmed by bacteriological and species specific PCR. The high number of seropositives was detected in male and veterinary professionals which confirms brucellosis as a major public health concern in risk group and combination of tests such as RBPT, STAT, ELISA and PCR are essentially required to have a foolproof diagnosis.