Is Human Brucellosis Endemics in Korea?

Brucellosis is a zoonotic disease transmitted to humans by animals infected with Brucella species. Brucella species are facultative intracellular bacteria consisting of aerobic gram-negative coccobacilli. Eight species of Brucella have been identified, including B. melitensis, B. abor-tus, B. suis, B. canis, B. ovis, B. neotomae, B. ceti, and B. pinnipe-dialis. 3 The three major pathogens causing brucellosis are B. abortus, B. melitensis, and B. suis. 4 In Korea, B. abortus is the main pathogenic species of human and bovine brucellosis. 5 The diagnosis of brucellosis should be based on clinical manifestations , a history of exposure to infected animals and positive serology, because the symptoms of this disease are non-specific. The most common features are fever, chills, night sweats, headache, arthralgia, and fatigue. 4,6 In a three-year follow-up study of human brucellosis in Korea, about 80.0% of patients with brucellosis complained of clinical symptoms such as chronic fatigue and arthralgia for more than three years after treatment. 7 Many complications of systemic infections can affect organ systems. 4,6,8 Osteoarticular involvement includes spondylitis and sacroiliitis, and hematologic abnormalities are common in the course of brucellosis. 4,9 Genitourinary involvement (orchi-epididymitis, glomerulonephritis, and renal abscesses), neu-rological involvement (meningitis, encephalitis), and pulmonary involvement (bronchitis, interstitial pneumonitis) can also occur. 4,10 Endocarditis is relatively rare, but is a serious manifestation that can lead to death. 4,11 The case fatality for brucellosis was less than 1.0% of cases. 10 Human brucellosis has been designated as a communicable disease in Korea since 2000. The first human brucellosis case in Korea was reported in 2002. Since an outbreak of human brucellosis in Jeongeup city, Jeollabuk-do province in 2003, the incidence of brucellosis has rapidly increased throughout Ko-rea. a total of 750 brucel-losis cases were reported in the " Disease Web Statistics System " of the Korea Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Fig. 1). 13 Cases of human brucellosis increased from a single patient in 2002 to 215 patients in 2006. Significantly more males are infected with human brucellosis than females (639 patients vs. 112 patients, 85.1% vs. 14.9%). The percentage distribution of human brucellosis cases by age group was as follows: ≤19, 20–39, 40–59, and over 60 age groups had 7 cases, 97 cases, 459 cases, and 188 cases, respectively. The age-specific incidence was highest in persons 40–59 years of age (61.0%). The distribution of human brucellosis by occupation was as follows: farmers , veterinarians, and other …