ArticlePLoS neglected tropical diseases2021
Latent class evaluation of the performance of serological tests for exposure to Brucella spp. in cattle, sheep, and goats in Tanzania.
Article in PLoS neglected tropical diseases, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
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12 citing papers in PubMed, 18 citations in OpenAlex.
- Prevalence of Brucellosis in Small Ruminants in Africa from 2000 to 2025: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Veterinary sciences · 2026Review
- Comparison of serological tools for reliable diagnosis of brucellosis circulation in the West-African context.BMC veterinary research · 2026Article
- Optimizing ovine brucellosis serodiagnosis: evaluation of recombinantFrontiers in veterinary science · 2026Article
- Diagnostic Performance of Four Serological Assays for Bovine Brucellosis and Optimised Cutoff Thresholds in an Endemic Region of Iran.Veterinary medicine and science · 2025Article
- Longitudinal study of foot-and-mouth disease virus in Northern Nigeria: implications for the roles of small ruminants and environmental contamination in endemic settings.Veterinary research · 2025Article
- Livestock production losses attributable to brucellosis in northern and central Tanzania: Application of an epidemiological-economic modelling framework.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2025Article
- Article
- Monitoring livestock pregnancy loss.eLife · 2024Article
- Novel Vertical Flow Immunoassay with Au@PtNPs for Rapid, Ultrasensitive, and On-Site Diagnosis of Human Brucellosis.ACS omega · 2023Article
- The Status and Risk Factors of Brucellosis in Smallholder Dairy Cattle in Selected Regions of Tanzania.Veterinary sciences · 2023Article
- Inter-epidemic Rift Valley fever virus infection incidence and risks for zoonotic spillover in northern Tanzania.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2022Article
- Prospective cohort study reveals unexpected aetiologies of livestock abortion in northern Tanzania.Scientific reports · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
18 authors at 9 institutions in 5 countries.
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Abstract
backgroundBrucellosis is a neglected zoonosis endemic in many countries, including regions of sub-Saharan Africa. Evaluated diagnostic tools for the detection of exposure to Brucella spp. are important for disease surveillance and guiding prevention and control activities. METHODS AND
findingsBayesian latent class analysis was used to evaluate performance of the Rose Bengal plate test (RBT) and a competitive ELISA (cELISA) in detecting Brucella spp. exposure at the individual animal-level for cattle, sheep, and goats in Tanzania. Median posterior estimates of RBT sensitivity were: 0.779 (95% Bayesian credibility interval (BCI): 0.570-0.894), 0.893 (0.636-0.989), and 0.807 (0.575-0.966), and for cELISA were: 0.623 (0.443-0.790), 0.409 (0.241-0.644), and 0.561 (0.376-0.713), for cattle, sheep, and goats, respectively. Sensitivity BCIs were wide, with the widest for cELISA in sheep. RBT and cELISA median posterior estimates of specificity were high across species models: RBT ranged between 0.989 (0.980-0.998) and 0.995 (0.985-0.999), and cELISA between 0.984 (0.974-0.995) and 0.996 (0.988-1). Each species model generated seroprevalence estimates for two livestock subpopulations, pastoralist and non-pastoralist. Pastoralist seroprevalence estimates were: 0.063 (0.045-0.090), 0.033 (0.018-0.049), and 0.051 (0.034-0.076), for cattle, sheep, and goats, respectively. Non-pastoralist seroprevalence estimates were below 0.01 for all species models. Series and parallel diagnostic approaches were evaluated. Parallel outperformed a series approach. Median posterior estimates for parallel testing were ≥0.920 (0.760-0.986) for sensitivity and ≥0.973 (0.955-0.992) for specificity, for all species models.
conclusionsOur findings indicate that Brucella spp. surveillance in Tanzania using RBT and cELISA in parallel at the animal-level would give high test performance. There is a need to evaluate strategies for implementing parallel testing at the herd- and flock-level. Our findings can assist in generating robust Brucella spp. exposure estimates for livestock in Tanzania and wider sub-Saharan Africa. The adoption of locally evaluated robust diagnostic tests in setting-specific surveillance is an important step towards brucellosis prevention and control.
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