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Page No. : 83-90

ABSTRACT

Contaminated poultry meat and eggs are the important source of Salmonella Typhimurium infection to humans. S. Gallinarum and S. Pullorum are other frequent poultry serovars, specific to avian species, causing infection in poultry. Thus, differentiation of these two types of infections of poultry is having a high public health importance. In an attempt for developing a rapid and convenient differential agglutination test for this purpose, it was found that 1: 10 dilution of the prepared S. Typhimurium antigen could differentiate this infection from poultry specific Salmonella serovars which can also be attained by undiluted antigen after pre-adsorption of S. Pullorum agglutinin from test sera. Since the specificity of earlier method was limited to the first 2 min, the later was found to be better. Agglutination using the second scheme showed a sensitivity of 85.41% with experimental infection and 100% correlation with tube agglutination test. It was also found that 3+ or more degree of agglutination and any degree of agglutination within 5 min is equal to a STAT antibody titre of 1:30 or more. We suggest that the developed method may be used to screen S. Typhimurium infections in poultry farms.

Keywords: Gallinarum, poultry, Pullorum, Salmonella, slide agglutination test, Typhimurium