Detection of Brucella among Voluntary Blood Donors in Turkey by Using a New Real Tune PCR Method

Bnicellosis is a worldwide zoonosis also the incidence of which has decreased in developed countries it is still effective in Asia, Africa, Central America and the Mediterranean basin (Turkey inside) that have insufficient public health and domestic animal health programs. There are many reports about Brucella endemics in Turkey. Although, human to human transmission is not frequently, it has been reported in association with blood transfusion, bone marrow transplantation and transplacental transmission in worldwide and Turkey. Human brucellosis is diagnosed based on clinical findings and laboratory studies that include bacteriological and serological tests. The conventional serological tests are insufficiently sensitive and specific to be used individually and often leading to difficulty in interpreting the results. In this study, researchers aimed the detection of possible Brucella carriers without manifest chnHcal finding among voluntary blood donors by using new real time PCR Method. Total 632 voluntary donor blood samples for four month were investigated for Brucella. The samples were subjected to both Wright and ELISA tests for Brucella. In the second step, leucocytes were separated from all samples and performed real time PCR based on BioRad I-Cycler. Although, the region is not high risk epidemiologic area for Brucellosis in. Turkey 4 out of total 632 samples were detected by Wright agglutination and Brucella IgG, IgM ELISA while 2 positive samples were found by I-Cycler based real time PCR detection. All of positive samples were collected from rural area donors. Even it is not in high prevalence, this results and earlier studies were shown brucellosis could be a risk for blood transfusion. Researchers advice especially donors from coming rural area must be performed a questionnaire for brucellosis findings and Brucella screening tests must be performed for blood donors in endemic areas