The correlation of agglutination titer with positive blood cultures in brucellosis: A comparison of two study periods.
Brucellosis is an endemic zoonosis in Saudi Arabia. Correlation of Brucella agglutination antibody titer with positive blood culture was performed over 2 time periods (1986 and 1998). At the King Fahad National Guard Hospital we generally consider a titer value of 1:320 or greater as being diagnostic of Brucella. Using this cut-off, the positive predictive value of 39.3% (95% CI=31.5 to 47.6) in the 1986 study increased to 55.7% (95% CI=42.4 to 68.5) in the recent study (P=0.03). This improvement is probably due to parallel improvement in both methodologies.
Memish
Z
Z
Department of Infection Prevention and Control, King Fahad National Guard Hospital, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. memish@ngha.med.sa
Oni
G
G
Mah
M
M
D000372:Agglutination Tests / Q000592:standards; D000907:Antibodies, Bacterial / Q000032:analysis*; D002002:Brucella / Q000302:isolation & purification* / Q000472:pathogenicity; D002006:Brucellosis / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000276:immunology; D006801:Humans; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D012044:Regression Analysis; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity
D000907:Antibodies, Bacterial