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Clinical and Vaccine Immunology, March 2007, p. 299-303, Vol. 14, No. 3
1071-412X/07/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/CVI.00350-06
Copyright © 2007, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Application of the Fluorescence Polarization Assay for Detection of Caprine Antibodies to Brucella melitensis in Areas of High Prevalence and Widespread Vaccination

Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Forestales y Agropecuarias, Campo Experimental Río Bravo, Río Bravo, Tamaulipas, México,¹ Ottawa Laboratories, Fallowfield, Canadian Food Inspection Agency, 3851 Fallowfield Road, Nepean, Ontario K2H 8P9, Canada,² Comité para el Fomento y Protección Pecuaria de Nuevo León, Laboratorio Central Regional de Monterrey, Terrenos Exposición Ganadera, Guadalupe, Nuevo León, México,³ Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, Laboratorio de Inmunología y Virología, Facultad de Ciencias Biológicas, San Nicolás de los Garza, Nuevo León, México⁴

Received 26 September 2006/ Returned for modification 8 November 2006/ Accepted 2 January 2007

The screening Rose Bengal test (RBT), the buffered plate agglutination test (BPAT), and the confirmatory complement fixation test (CFT) are currently approved by the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) for diagnosis of goat brucellosis. However, RBT (at 3% or 8% cell concentration) is known to be affected by vaccinal antibodies. In the present study, Mexican and Canadian OIE tests were compared with the fluorescence polarization assay (FPA), alone or in combination, using indirect and competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays as classification variables for goat sera obtained from an area of high prevalence and widespread vaccination. The relative sensitivities and specificities were, respectively, 99.7% and 32.5% for RBT3, 92.8% and 68.8% for RBT8, 98.4% and 84.8% for Canadian CFT, 83.7% and 65.5% for Mexican CFT, and 78.1% and 89.3% for FPA. The use of FPA as the confirmatory test in combination with other tests significantly increased the final specificities of the screening tests alone; BPAT, RBT3, and RBT8 plus FPA resulted in final specificities of 90%, 91.2%, and 91.3%, respectively, whereas for the combinations RBT3 plus Mexican CFT, RBT8 plus Mexican CFT, and BPAT plus Canadian CFT, specificities were 65.5%, 63.2%, and 91.7%, respectively. We suggest that FPA may be routinely applied as an adaptable screening test for diagnosis of goat brucellosis and as a confirmatory test for screening test series. Some advantages of FPA are that its cutoff can be adjusted to improve its sensitivity or specificity, it is a low-cost and easy-to-perform test of choice when specificity is relevant or when an alternative confirmatory test is not available, and it is not affected by vaccination, thus reducing the number of misdiagnosed and killed goats.

Published ahead of print on 31 January 2007.

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Ramirez-Pfeiffer, C., Diaz-Aparicio, E., Gomez-Flores, R., Rodriguez-Padilla, C., Morales-Loredo, A., Alvarez-Ojeda, G. (2008). Use of the Brucella melitensis Native Hapten To Diagnose Brucellosis in Goats by a Rapid, Simple, and Specific Fluorescence Polarization Assay. CVI 15: 911-915 [Abstract] [Full Text]