Serosurveillance of Bovine Brucellosis Using RBPT and c-ELISA and Comparative Evaluation of Test Performance

The present study was conducted to evaluate the presence of Brucella infection amongst the randomly selected cattle and buffalo’s population in and around Chennai. The Rose Bengal Plate Test (RBPT) and Bru Alert® Brucella Antibody c-ELISA was employed to screen 355 sera samples (295 from cattle and 60 from buffalo) for the presence of Brucella antibody. The overall positivity of 8.73 % (31/355), 10.14 % (36/355) in bovine population, within this 9.15 % (27/295), 11.19 % (33/295) among white cattle and 6.66% (4/60), 5 % (3/60) among buffaloes by RBPT and c-ELSA respectively. Comparatively high seropositivity was found in >5 years age groups, females and exotic cross breed animals. The agreement between the two test was excellent (Kappa=0.8847) and also, chi-square test indicated an evidence of strong (P<0.01) association between the tests. Based on this study, c-ELISA has been found to be a gold standard test for detecting Brucella antibodies having more sensitivity and specificity. So on, it is recommended that RBPT could be successfully used for initial screening of brucellosis in bovines and c-ELISA should be used as confirmatory test to eliminate false positive results amongst positive sera.