A Comparative Study of Microplate Agglutination Test (MAT) with Enzyme Linked Immunosorbant Assay (ELISA) for Diagnosis of Brucellosis

Brucellosis is one of the important Zoonotic diseases in India and continues to be a major public health concern globally. Human brucellosis is difficult to diagnose and requires laboratory testing for confirmation. Previously Standard Agglutination Test (SAT) and Rose Bengal Plate Test (RBPT) were used to detect Brucellosis. Objective of the study is the determination of antibody titres in the positive sera by ELISA and MAT. The study was conducted in Department of Microbiology RIMS, Raichur. Blood samples were collected from the patients attending orthopedic OPD of RIMS teaching hospital with complaints of fever, joint pain and backache. RBPT, MAT and ELISA IgM and IgG were carried out on serum samples. It was done using Chi square test. Out of 116 blood samples tested 23 cases were positive for Brucella antibodies by RBPT and MAT. Twenty two cases were positive for ELISA IgM and twenty cases were positive for ELISA IgG. All the 40 healthy controls were negative by RBPT, MAT and ELISA. Considering ELISA as gold standard, sensitivity and specificity of MAT when compared to IgM ELISA was 95% and 98.92% respectively. Sensitivity and specificity of MAT when compared to IgG ELISA was 86.95% and 96.77% respectively. To conclude along with MAT, ELISA should also be done to rule out false positive cases.