Brucellosis: Review on the Recent Trends in Pathogenicity and Laboratory Diagnosis

Abstract

Brucellosis is a zoonotic infection transmitted from animals to humans by the ingestion of infected food products, direct contact with an infected animal or inhalation of aerosols. The last method is remarkably efficient given the relatively low concentration of organisms (10 – 100 bacteria) needed to establish infection in humans, and has brought renewed attention to this old disease. Brucella is a facultative intracellular pathogen that has the ability to survive and multiply in the phagocytes and cause abortion in cattle and undulant fever in humans. Brucella spp particularly B. melitensis, B. abortus, and B. suis represent a significant public health concern. At present, B. melitensis is the principle cause of human brucellosis in India. Molecular studies have demonstrated the phylogenetic affiliation of Brucella to Agrobacterium, Ochrobactrum, and Rhizobium. Human brucellosis still presents scientists and clinicians with several challenges, with regard to the understanding of its pathogenic mechanism, severity, progression, and development of improved treatment regimens. Molecular studies have now highlighted the pathogenesis of Brucella, for the development of newer diagnostic tools that will be useful in developing countries where brucellosis is a common, but often a neglected disease. This review compiles all these issues in general and the pathogenicity and newer diagnostic tools in particular.

Expression, purification and immunochemical characterization of recombinant OMP28 protein of <i>Brucella</i> species

“…Furthermore, handling of these microorganisms poses a high risk to laboratory personnel, since Brucella spp. are class III pathogens (Christopher et al, 2010;Poester et al, 2010;Smirnova et al, 2013). The conventional serological tests, of which the most frequently used are the Rose Bengal test (RBT), the tube agglutination test (TAT) and the complement fixation test (CFT), principally measure antibodies against the immunodominant smooth lipopolysaccharide (S-LPS) of the bacterial cell membrane.…”

“…In addition, serological tests based on anti-LPS antibodies give false positives because of cross-reactivity with other Gram-negative bacteria such as Yersinia enterocolitica O:9, Salmonella spp. and Escherichia coli (Christopher et al, 2010;Smirnova et al, 2013). Outer membrane proteins (OMPs) of Brucella spp.…”

Molecular Typing of Brucella melitensis and B. abortus from Human Blood Samples Using PCR-RFLP Method

“…Brucellosis is a bacterial disease caused by Brucella members and it is one of the important common diseases in human and animals and an important reason of abortion in animals (1)(2)(3)(4). This disease is endemically found all around the world especially in Asian, African, North American and Mediterranean countries (5,6).…”

Bayesian estimation of true prevalence, sensitivity and specificity of indirect ELISA, Rose Bengal Test and Slow Agglutination Test for the diagnosis of brucellosis in sheep and goats in Bangladesh

“…In sheep, considerable conditional dependence between iELISA and RBT and between RBT and SAT among infected as well as non-infected sheep were observed. The iELISA is a quantitative test which detects only IgG, SAT quantifies both IgM and IgG (but mainly IgM) and RBT qualitatively detects both IgM and IgG (Christopher et al, 2010;Godfroid et al, 2010;Dı'az et al, 2011). The conditional correlation between RBT and SAT for sheep may be explained by the similarity of the type of antibody detected.…”