Brucella cultures should be handled using BSL-3 practices, with culture manipulations being done in a biological safety cabinet.

General information
Brucella from Sir David Bruce (1855-1931), microbiologist in Australia and England.

Brucellosis continues to be one of the most common laboratory-acquired infections.

Practices associated with transmission in the laboratory include unprotecting handling of specimens, sniffing of plates, mouth pipetting and exposure of the eyes, nose, or mouth to infectious aerosols.

Taxonomy
Family: Brucellaceae

Natural habitats
Brucella are facultative intracellular parasites, taking as their natural habitat a variety of animal species.

Human pathogen in order of decreasing virulence

B. melitensis - Malta fever sheep, goats, alpacas and camel
B. suis - Brucellosis pigs, swine, reindeer and caribou
B. abortus - Bang's disease cattle, camels, buffalo, yaks and horses
B. canis - Brucellosis dogs

Malditof knows only B. melitensis

Clinical significance

Transmission from human to human is very rare

Brucellosis
Although the disease can begin acutely, the beginning is usually insidious and is characterized by slight fever without local symptoms.
The fever is irregular and is accompanied with complaints of headache, malaise, fatigue, sweating and joint problems.

They can live intracellular and invade a variety of tissues.

Incubation period of 1 week to 2-3 months.

Sometimes it proceeds acutely with wavy fever (febris undulans).
They spread into the bloodstream and localize in the liver, spleen, bone and other tissues and form granulomas there.
Are therefore difficult to reach for the immune system and antibiotics.

Complications include bacterial endocarditis, nephritis, meningoencephalitis and orchitis.

The fatality rate is <1% and is mainly associated with the occurrence of bacterial endocarditis.

In non-zoonotic areas the infection proceeds possibly exacerbated by doctor's delay, probably due to a slower running diagnostics because the disease is low in the differential diagnosis.

Serology
Usually the diagnosis is established by serological testing.
Practical nature of the reasons are: it can take up to 4 weeks before a culture is positive and in practice, the patient is often already used antibiotics, so the culture is useless.