title: Laboratory evaluation of 3M Petrifilms and University of Minnesota Bi-plates as potential on-farm tests for clinical mastitis.
abstract: The objective was to determine test characteristics and compare 2 potential on-farm culture systems for clinical mastitis, the Minnesota Easy Culture System II Bi-plate and Petrifilm. The tests were evaluated using clinically positive mastitic milk samples (n = 282) to determine their ability to differentiate appropriate treatment groups; all cases that had gram-positive growth were considered treatment candidates (n = 161), whereas cases that grew gram-negative organisms only or yielded no bacterial growth were classified as no treatment (n = 121). For Petrifilm, both undiluted and 1:10 diluted milk samples were used. To create treatment categories, 2 types of Petrifilms were used, Aerobic Count (AC) and Coliform Count (CC). Both Bi-plates and Petrifilms were read after 24 h of incubation. Analysis was conducted at various colony count thresholds for the Petrifilm test system. The combination of Petrifilms that had the highest sensitivity classified a case as gram-negative if there were > or =20 colonies present on the CC. If there were <20 colonies present on the CC and >5 colonies present on the AC, a case would be classified as gram-positive. The Bi-plate had a sensitivity of 97.9% and a specificity of 68.6%. The Petrifilm test system had a sensitivity of 93.8% and a specificity of 70.1%. There was no significant difference in the sensitivities between the tests. All Bi-plates and Petrifilms were read by a laboratory technician and a group of masked readers with limited microbiology training. Kappa values for the masked readers were 0.75 for Bi-plates and 0.84 and 0.86 for AC and CC Petrifilms, respectively. The Bi-plate and Petrifilm were able to successfully categorize clinical cases of mastitis into 2 treatments based on their ability to detect the presence of a gram-positive organism. Neither method had the ability to determine if a sample was contaminated. The results of this study indicate that both tests were able to appropriately categorize cases, which could potentially result in a reduction in the quantity of antibiotics used to treat clinical cases of mastitis.
authors.affiliation: Department of Health Management, University of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown, PEI, C1A 4P3 Canada. jmccarron@upei.ca
authors.forename: J L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: McCarron
authors.forename: G P
authors.initials: GP
authors.lastname: Keefe
authors.forename: S L B
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: McKenna
authors.forename: I R
authors.initials: IR
authors.lastname: Dohoo
authors.forename: D E
authors.initials: DE
authors.lastname: Poole
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001419:Bacteria / Q000302:isolation & purification; D001424:Bacterial Infections / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000382:microbiology / Q000662:veterinary*; D002417:Cattle; D015169:Colony Count, Microbial; D003612:Dairying / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D008414:Mastitis, Bovine / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000382:microbiology; D008892:Milk / Q000382:microbiology*; D011933:Reagent Kits, Diagnostic / Q000662:veterinary*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity
chemical_list: D011933:Reagent Kits, Diagnostic