{"doi":"10.1371/journal.pntd.0009630","title":"Latent class evaluation of the performance of serological tests for exposure to Brucella spp. in cattle, sheep, and goats in Tanzania","abstract":"BACKGROUND: Brucellosis is a neglected zoonosis endemic in many countries, including regions of sub-Saharan Africa. Evaluated diagnostic tools for the detection of exposure to Brucella spp. are important for disease surveillance and guiding prevention and control activities. METHODS AND FINDINGS: Bayesian latent class analysis was used to evaluate performance of the Rose Bengal plate test (RBT) and a competitive ELISA (cELISA) in detecting Brucella spp. exposure at the individual animal-level for cattle, sheep, and goats in Tanzania. Median posterior estimates of RBT sensitivity were: 0.779 (95% Bayesian credibility interval (BCI): 0.570-0.894), 0.893 (0.636-0.989), and 0.807 (0.575-0.966), and for cELISA were: 0.623 (0.443-0.790), 0.409 (0.241-0.644), and 0.561 (0.376-0.713), for cattle, sheep, and goats, respectively. Sensitivity BCIs were wide, with the widest for cELISA in sheep. RBT and cELISA median posterior estimates of specificity were high across species models: RBT ranged between 0.989 (0.980-0.998) and 0.995 (0.985-0.999), and cELISA between 0.984 (0.974-0.995) and 0.996 (0.988-1). Each species model generated seroprevalence estimates for two livestock subpopulations, pastoralist and non-pastoralist. Pastoralist seroprevalence estimates were: 0.063 (0.045-0.090), 0.033 (0.018-0.049), and 0.051 (0.034-0.076), for cattle, sheep, and goats, respectively. Non-pastoralist seroprevalence estimates were below 0.01 for all species models. Series and parallel diagnostic approaches were evaluated. Parallel outperformed a series approach. Median posterior estimates for parallel testing were ≥0.920 (0.760-0.986) for sensitivity and ≥0.973 (0.955-0.992) for specificity, for all species models. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings indicate that Brucella spp. surveillance in Tanzania using RBT and cELISA in parallel at the animal-level would give high test performance. There is a need to evaluate strategies for implementing parallel testing at the herd- and flock-level. Our findings can assist in generating robust Brucella spp. exposure estimates for livestock in Tanzania and wider sub-Saharan Africa. The adoption of locally evaluated robust diagnostic tests in setting-specific surveillance is an important step towards brucellosis prevention and control.","journal":"PLoS neglected tropical diseases","year":2021,"id":178674,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":19,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9593,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":724598,"name":"Stella Mazeri","orcid":"0000-0002-4591-8267","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":495857,"name":"Sarah Cleaveland","orcid":"0000-0002-0456-0959","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":22443,"name":"John A. 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Mmbaga","orcid":"0000-0002-5550-1916","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":724599,"name":"Niwael Mtui-Malamsha","orcid":"0000-0001-9459-4580","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":345417,"name":"Gabriel Shirima","orcid":"0000-0001-7768-711X","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":345418,"name":"Emmanuel S. Swai","orcid":"0000-0001-6273-7946","position":14,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":345419,"name":"Kate M. Thomas","orcid":"0000-0002-1589-8314","position":15,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":724600,"name":"Mark Bronsvoort","orcid":"0000-0002-3271-8485","position":16,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":345422,"name":"Jo E. B. Halliday","orcid":"0000-0002-1329-9035","position":17,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":345408,"name":"Rebecca F. Bodenham","orcid":"0000-0002-3426-9230","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":77,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:47:40.592580Z","pmid":"34428205","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}