THE ELISA FOR THE EXAMINATION OF HARE SERA FOR ANTIBRUCELLA ANTIBODIES

Hare brucellosis is caused primarily by Brucella suis biovar 2, Hares along with wild boars are the natural reservoir of this microorganism. Tn view of restriction of applicability of traditional serological me thods the work aimed to develop the ELISA to examine hare sera for the presence of anti-Brucella antibodies. Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) antige n obtained from the strain S19 of Brucella abortus and the conjugate o f antibodies against rabbit immunoglobulin with horseradish peroxidase were used in the test. Hares' sera positive and negative in the CFT w ere used as controls of the ELISA. The sera collected from 9 hares sus pected to be infected with Brucella organisms, positive in CFT (in thi s number 7 hares revealed clinical symptoms or anathomopathological le sions characteristic of brucellosis), 6 sera from hares showing no sym ptoms of the disease, negative in CFT and 520 sera from hares monitore d for brucellosis were tested. All serum samples from hares suspected for Brucella infection were positive in ELISA and 2 of them were negat ive in RBPT. Additionally among the samples from hares monitored 12 se ra were positive in ELISA and CFT, whereas 9 sera from 12 ones were al so positive in the RBPT. The obtained results indicated that the ELISA developed in our laboratory proved to be equivalent in specificity to CFT. In addition, ELISA proved to be more sensitive than RBPT for the diagnosis of Brucella infection in hares. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science L td. All rights reserved.