ABSTRACT
There are few studies on the isolation of Brucella abortus and Brucella inelitensis from patients' sera. The aim of this study was simultaneous isolation of pathogenic brucella species from human serum samples by multiplex PCR method. 50 blood and serum samples isolated from patients with clinically suspected brucellosis were inoculated into brucella agar medium and we used rnultiplex-PCR, with three primers to detect brucella species. We incubated 0.5 ml of serum in Brucella broth for 72 hours at 37 °C in 5% carbon dioxide. To confirm the results of PCR, the PCR products were restricted by restriction enzymes, TaqI and RsaI. From 50 blood samples 4 [8%] cultures were positive. Using biochemical tests and after determination of the characteristics of the positive cases, they were identified as B. melitensis. After multiplex PCR, 9 cases [18%] were positive and 41 cases [82%] were negative. Among the positive sera, B. inelitensis was identified in 7 cases [78%] and B. abortus in 2 cases [22%]. Of so blood samples, 5 [10%] were positive and 45 [90%] were negative for B. melitensis. All the results were confirmed by PCR-RFLP. Our study showed that multiplex PCR method was simple, rapid and is more sensitive for isolation of brucella from serum [especially B. abortus and B. inelitensis] in comparison to complete blood