Bacteriological detection of Brucella abortus and its characterization by PCR in the sporadic outbreak of bovine brucellosis in Gyeonggi province

Bovine brucellosis has occurred for years in Gyeonggi province under the national test and slaughter scheme. The serum agglutination test (SAT) is a diagnostic tool to confirm the disease despite the argument on its specificity. We selected 8 farms where only one or two individuals were diagnosed as brucellosis through SAT at the primary regular herd check and isolated the causative organism and characterized the species by species-specific PCR. The pathogen isolation was successful in 6 farms out of 8 farms by microbiological culture, showing the successful rate of 75%. The isolation rate of the causative organism represents 70% from supra-mammary lymph node and 60% from uterine tissues. They were characterized as Brucella abortus biovar 1 after biotyping by PCR, showing the fragment of 498 bp. Five of 8 farms were diagnosed as brucellosis two to four times more over the intervals of two or three months. Here in this study we briefly showed the correlation of the sporadic outbreak of brucellosis tested by SAT and the isolation of the causative organism. Moreover one or two reactors against brucellosis among considerable size of herd may indicate that SAT failed to detect potentially infected individuals in the incubation stage or chronic phase of the disease.