The Correlation of Agglutination Titer with Positive Blood Cultures in Brucellosis: A Comparison of Two Study Periods
- Resource Type
- Article
- Authors
- Memish, Z.; Oni, G.; Mah, M.
- Source
- Journal of Chemotherapy; April 2001, Vol. 13 Issue: Supplement 1 p60-61, 2p
- Subject
- Language
- ISSN
- 1120009X; 19739478
SummaryBrucellosis is an endemic zoonosis in Saudi Arabia. Correlation of Brucellaagglutination 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.