Blood Cultures for the Diagnosis of Human Brucellosis

Abstract

Brucellosis represents a serious health threat to human populations living in areas endemic for the disease. The clinical manifestations of brucellosis are protean and nonspecific, and laboratory confirmation of the diagnosis is crucial for an adequate management of the patient and implementation of infection control measures aimed to control the disease in affected herds. Although brucellosis can be confirmed by serologic tests and nucleic acid amplification assays, culture detection of circulating Brucella organisms remains a diagnostic cornerstone. Traditionally, prolonged incubation of media and performance of blind subcultures of negative blood culture vials have been recommended to maximize isolation of the organism. In recent years, modern automated blood culture systems have revolutionized the diagnosis of human brucellosis by improving sensitivity and enabling detection of brucellae within the routine one-week incubation protocol followed in most Clinical Microbiology laboratories. Development of molecular techniques and mass-spectrometry technology have also shortened the time needed to identify members of the genus, whereas use of biological safety cabinets considerably reduce the risks of contagion to laboratory personnel.

Isolation and identification of <i>Brucella abortus</i> and <i>B. melitensis</i> in ruminants with a history of abortion: the first report from Eritrea

“…Similar challenges of isolating Brucella from blood were reported elsewhere (Pappas and Papadimitriou, 2007;Patel et al, 2017). Failure of isolation may be due to a low number of viable organisms (Warethc et al, 2014), localization of Brucella in predilection tissues such as lymph nodes and uterus as an intracellular organism (Pappas et al, 2005), or it could be associated with the intermittent availability of Brucella in peripheral blood (Yagupsky, 2015). Technical limitations could be an additional cause of the low isolation rate of Brucella from biological specimens in the present study.…”

Presumptive Identification of Smooth Brucella Strain Antibodies in Canines

“…The gold standard for the confirmation of brucellosis infection in any species is via positive culture result from either blood or tissue. Unfortunately, false negative culture results are very common, with low and highly variable published sensitivity rates ranging from 10 to 90% ( 33 ). Because the bacteria is so fastidious and slow growing, negative culture results can be due to a number of reasons, including: overgrowth of contaminate bacteria, absence of the bacteria in the cultured specimen, and inappropriate culture conditions ( 34 ).…”