Brucellosis: development and success using ELISAs for diagnosis

摘要

Brucellosis is a highly infectious disease of a substantial number of animal species. Because of its pathogenicity to humans, the cost and the time involved, classical diagnosis by isolation of the causative microorganism is not commonly used for diagnosis of individual animals. Presumptive diagnosis has been made for about 100 years by using serological tets. Initially, a slow agglutination test was developed and later modified to increase the sensitivity and to decrease the time. Complement fixation and gel diffusion tests were also developed and, in some cases, widely used. The development of primary binding assays, in particular, enzyme immunoassays, has provided tools for diagnosis that are more accurate than conventional serological tests. The enzyme immunoassays, the indirect and competitive formats, have different uses but are both potent additions to the diagnosis of brucellosis in that they may be used for rapid and accurate assessment of antibody in milk and serum in the absence of interference by antibodies resulting from vaccination. Another type of primary binding assay, a fluorescence polarization assay, was also developed for the diagnosis of brucellosis. This assay, which is a homogeneous format, has the added advantages of being simple to perform, very rapid, potentially inexpensive and capable of being performed outside the laboratory.