Human brucellosis: An observational study from a tertiary care centre in northern India

Brucellosis is a neglected zoonotic disease that affects both humans and animals. In humans, brucellosis begins with chronic illness leading to great financial losses from not being able to work well and continued treatment costs. Joint pain is the common presentation of brucellosis and there are several risk factors associated with brucellosis. But few such researches have come from northern India. We studied to detect and characterize the Brucella species from patients having complaints of joint pain and also to know the potential causes of human brucellosis. A total of 200 blood samples were collected from the participants having joints pain, from September 2019 to September 2021 at Gandhi memorial and associated hospital of King George’s Medical University, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, and tested by serology for anti brucella IgM and IgG, molecular tests by RTPCR, conventional PCR and automated blood culture system. The study showed positive results by anti-brucella IgM ELISA 19 (9.5%), anti brucella IgG 23 (11.5%), and of those, 1 (0.5%) was positive for both anti-brucella IgM and anti-brucella IgG ELISA. Out of 19 anti-brucella IgM ELISA positive, 8 (4%) samples were positive for PCR/ RT-PCR and that was negative for anti-brucella IgG ELISA. All blood culture reports of all patients were negative.  Our study concluded that anti-brucella IgM ELISA was more accurate than anti-brucella IgG ELISA in detecting human brucellosis. Consumption of animal products (i.e. milk, a dairy product of cow, buffalo, goat, and meat of goat) and contact with animals were the main risk factors that were identified for brucella disease.