The first case of Brucella canis in Sweden: background, case report and recommendations from a northern European perspective

Infection with Brucella canis has been diagnosed in Sweden for the first time. It was diagnosed in a three-year-old breeding bitch with reproductive disturbances. Fifteen in-contact dogs were tested repeatedly and all of them were negative for B. canis. The source of infection could not be defined. The present article describes the case and the measures undertaken and gives a short review over B. canis. Recommendations on how to avoid the infection in non-endemic countries are given

Experimental ELISA for diagnosis of ovine dicrocoeliosis and application in a field survey

Dicrocoeliosis is a parasitic disease caused by trematodes belonging to the genus Dicrocoelium. It usually produces mild symptoms, and for this reason, dicrocoeliosis often remains undetected. Its diagnosis is mostly based on postmortem examination of the liver or on coprological assays for in vivo diagnosis. However, the latter method has scant sensitivity and because of the long pre-patency of Dicrocoelium spp. only permits late diagnosis. In the present study, an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was developed based on excretory/secretory antigen of Dicrocoelium dendriticum. The ELISA detected antibodies (IgG) in experimental infected sheep starting from day 30 post-infection (d.p.i.), whereas coprological samples were positive from 58 d.p.i. The ELISA was used in a field study in order to assess dicrocoeliosis seroprevalence in ovine flocks from the province of Trento (northeastern Italy), and this was the first sero-epidemiological study of ovine dicrocoeliosis in northern Italy. Altogether, 842 sheep sera were tested. In accordance with previous surveys carried out in other regions of Italy, a high prevalence of 80% to 100% was found

Evaluation of a fluid versus a powder pepsin formulation to detect Trichinella spiralis larvae in meat samples by a digestion technique

International audiencePepsin powder constitutes a health risk, potentially causing severe allergic reactions to those handling the chemical. A fluid pepsin formulation was produced and tested, first in a preliminary study and then in a ring trial encompassing four European National Reference Laboratories (NRLs). The purpose of each trial was to ascertain and compare the action of pepsin powder with that of the pepsin fluid for digesting meat and liberating encapsulated Trichinella spiralis larvae for subsequent counting. The quality of digestion was furthermore evaluated by assessing the visibility through the digestion fluid and the amount of debris remaining after digestion. For the ring trial, at each laboratory 20 blinded replicate 100-g samples of pork meat containing a known number of encapsulated T. spiralis larvae (0 to 30) were digested by the magnetic stirrer method using either the standard pepsin powder (10 samples) or the pepsin fluid (10 samples). With an average recovery rate of 70 to 80%, all NRLs found the pepsin fluid and pepsin powder to be equally effective. The NRLs also found no difference between the two pepsin formulations with regard to debris remnants or visibility through the digestion fluid. The use of pepsin fluid may therefore constitute an improvement of the digestion procedure for the analysts involved

Validation of a Western Blot for the detection of anti-Trichinella spp. antibodies in domestic pigs

Trichinellosis is a zoonotic disease in humans caused by Trichinella spp. According to international regulations and guidelines, serological surveillance can be used to demonstrate the absence of Trichinella spp. in a defined domestic pig population. Most enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) tests presently available do not yield 100% specificity, and therefore, a complementary test is needed to confirm the diagnosis of any initial ELISA seropositivity. The goal of the present study was to evaluate the sensitivity and specificity of a Western Blot assay based on somatic Trichinella spiralis muscle stage (L1) antigen using Bayesian modeling techniques. A total of 295 meat juice and serum samples from pigs negative for Trichinella larvae by artificial digestion, including 74 potentially cross-reactive sera of pigs with other nematode infections, and 93 meat juice samples from pigs infected with Trichinella larvae were included in the study. The diagnostic sensitivity and specificity of the Western Blot were ranged from 95.8% to 96.0% and from 99.5% to 99.6%, respectively. A sensitivity analysis showed that the model outcomes were hardly influenced by changes in the prior distributions, providing a high confidence in the outcomes of the models. This validation study demonstrated that the Western Blot is a suitable method to confirm samples that reacted positively in an initial ELISA