Brucellosis in horses around Van, Turkey

A programme is being carried out in Turkey to eradicate brucellosis from cattle by compulsory slaughtering of positive cases on serological test surveillance. In spite of the very strict application of the programme, the results obtained so far are not satisfactory in respect of eliminating the disease. It seems that it will be very difficult to achieve this goal without considering the disease status in other domestic animals. Brucella abortus is associated with chronic inflammatory conditions including fistulous withers, poll-evil and also joint infection in horses. Consequently, in this study, to evaluate prevalence of brucellosis in horses, a comparative study of standard tube agglutination test (STAT) and Rose Bengal Plate Agglutination Test (RBPT) were carried out on horse sera.