An indirect enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (IELISA), a competitive ELISA (CELISA), and a fluorescence polarization assay (FPA) for the presumptive serological diagnosis of swine brucellosis were evaluated using two populations of swine sera: sera from brucellosis-free Canadian herds and sera from Argentina selected based on positive reactions in the buffered antigen plate agglutination test (BPAT) and the 2-mercaptoethanol (2-ME) test. In addition, sera from adult swine from which Brucella suis was isolated at least once for each farm of origin were evaluated. The IELISA, CELISA, and FPA specificity values were 99.9, 99.5, and 98.3%, respectively, and the IELISA, CELISA, and FPA sensitivity values relative to the BPAT and the 2-ME test were 98.9, 96.6, and 93.8%, respectively. Actual sensitivity was assessed by using 37 sera from individual pigs from which B. suis was cultured, and the values obtained were as follows: BPAT, 86.5%; 2-ME test, 81.1%; IELISA, 86.5%; CELISA, 78.5%; and FPA, 80.0%.Brucella suis occurs naturally in the smooth phase. The smooth Brucella spp. share certain smooth lipopolysaccharide (SLPS) epitopes, resulting in extensive serological cross-reactions. For this reason, conventional serological tests for swine brucellosis use antigens from Brucella abortus rather than B. suis, as shown by extensive testing for swine brucellosis in the United States (6). Conventional serological tests (16) and indirect enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (IELISAs) (4, 16) cannot identify animals infected with Yersinia enterocolitica O:9 because of epitopes shared with Brucella spp. (16), resulting in lower specificity values than assays such as the competitive ELISA (CELISA) and the fluorescence polarization assay (FPA), which are capable of distinguishing animals infected with cross-reacting microorganisms (8, 9, 15) or vaccinated with B. abortus strain 19 (11) from animals infected with B. abortus or B. suis. The specificity of conventional serological agglutination tests was further reduced by nonspecific antibody thought to be immunoglobulin M (IgM) (16).Due to the uncertain nature of serological reactions to Brucella in pigs, the screening buffered antigen plate agglutination test (BPAT) (2) and the 2-mercaptoethanol (2-ME) agglutination test (7) are currently used for the detection of B. suis in infected herds. Only a few studies have described the development of primary binding assays for the detection of antibody to B. suis (17,20).More recently the IELISA, the CELISA, and the FPA developed for the diagnosis of bovine brucellosis (10, 14) have been validated for the presumptive diagnosis of swine brucellosis (15). The aims of the present study were to evaluate the IELISA, CELISA, and FPA for diagnosis of porcine brucellosis in Argentina, compared with the BPAT and 2-ME test used as diagnostic tests in Argentina, and to confirm previous data.
MATERIALS AND METHODSNegative sera. Sera from Canadian pigs with no clinical or epidemiological evidence of brucellosis (B. suis has not been detected in Canad...