abstract

Beginning with the discovery of marine origin Brucella in 1994 concerns have been raised about the prevalence of this disease in marine mammal populations and possible risks of exposure to this pathogen in humans who interact with marine mammals. These concerns dictated the need for developing new tools to enable confident diagnoses whether in marine mammals or humans. These tools and diagnoses were not possible without our conducting a multidisciplinary study comparing the extant diagnostic modalities with newer testing methods. The development of these new tools also required that we make direct comparisons between gold standard classical microbiology and newer molecular method results with c-ELISA results in order to address issues of sensitivity and specificity of the c-ELISA.

Human interaction with marine mammals may be as simple as participating in a seal or whale watch or as involved and intimate as participating in a necropsy, or subsistence hunting and consuming marine mammal tissues. We have conducted seroprevalence surveys on two suspected at risk human populations. The first human cohort sampled consisted of veterinarians, researchers and animal care personnel who had satisfactorily completed questionnaires relating to their histories of marine mammal interactions. The second cohort will consist of samples from subsistence hunters and consumers of marine mammals.

In our multiyear study of marine Brucella, we have also processed thousands of marine mammal samples and demonstrated significant differences in seroprevalence rates in different marine mammal species as well as differences in conspecifics from geographically separated populations.