Owing to the relatively long duration of specific serum plague antibodies in the host, the serological diagnosis of plague has substantial advantages over the conventional method of isolation of the causative agent. For the performance of both the complement-fixation (CF) and passive haemagglutination (HA) tests, the use of highly purified, specific Fraction 1 antigen is essential, and its preparation is discussed in this paper. Although both tests measure the same antibodies, the passive HA test is the more sensitive and constitutes the most effective means of detecting recovery from plague infection in nature. The CF test is nevertheless invaluable for such purposes as determining the antibody content of sera from immunized or infected hosts, indicating the amount of Fraction 1 developed by strains of Pasteurella pestis in cultures and therefore present in a vaccine, or detecting and estimating the amount of Fraction 1 antigen in extracts prepared from infected animal tissues and therefore for the field diagnosis of wild rodent plague after contamination or decomposition of rodents' carcasses.

Animals↗

PubMed1965

Susceptibility of the langur monkey (Semnopithecus entellus) to experimental plague: pathology and immunity.

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Animals↗

PubMed1965

Results of a preliminary serological survey of small mammal populations for plague on the island of Hawaii.

Since 1910 the District of Hamakua, Island of Hawaii, has been considered an endemic plague area. To obtain indirect evidence of plague infection in rodents and in the mongoose, serological surveys of the small mammal populations were undertaken. The passive microhaemagglutination test demonstrated the presence of positive reactors (titres of 1:16 and higher) in the sera of 2641 rodents and 385 mongooses tested. Positive percentages were: Rattus exulans, 1.5%; R. norvegicus, 1.9%; R. rattus, 0.6%; Mus musculus, 1.1%; and Herpestes auropunctatus, 12.5%. This study has proved the continued presence of a permanent reservoir of plague in indigenous rodent and mongoose populations after a period of 65 years since the introduction of plague into Hawaii and has demonstrated that the mongoose is an excellent indicator of plague infection.

Animals↗

PubMed1939