Variations in Brucella Agglutination Reactions in Different Laboratories

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Abstract
There is often a wide divergence of results in Brucella agglutination reactions when the blood specimens of patients with suspected chronic brucellosis are tested simultaneously in different laboratories. Some laboratories report negative results on the same blood which is reported positive (1:80 to 1:1280) by one or more other laboratories. Such false negative reports were obtained in 30% of 215 cases. False positive reactions are ruled out by differential diagnostic studies in addition to the performance of Brucella complement-fixation and opsonocytophagic tests. The discrepancies in the agglutination reactions are presumably due chiefly to differences in the strains of B. abortus used in the prepns. of the antigens. The most reliably sensitive antigen was made from 5 strains which were selected from a group of 20 strains. The next best antigen was made from strain No. 80, but another antigen made from sub-cultures of the same strain was far less sensitive.

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