Lack of correlation of Brucella antibody titers with clinical outcomes and culture positivity of brucellosis

Table 3 Pearson’s correlation coefficient of the correlations between end of therapy Brucella antibody titers with different outcome variables (n = 63)

Variable	R with *Brucella melitensis* antibody titer (P value)	R with *Brucella abortus* antibody titer (P value)
Clinical cure	− 0.29 (0.03)^a	− 0.28 (0.03)^a
Mortality	−0.35 (0.79)	0.11 (0.39)
Length of stay	−0.26 (0.14)	− 0.27 (0.14)
Duration of therapy	−0.11 (0.42)	− 0.06 (0.68)
EOT temperature	0.01 (0.96)	0.01 (0.96)
EOT white blood cells count	−0.27 (0.06)	−0.43 (0.002)^b
EOT C-reactive protein	−0.17 (0.29)	−0.14 (0.39)
EOT erythrocyte sedimentation rate	0.17 (0.34)	0.03 (0.88)

EOT End of therapy
^a This result indicates that lower antibody titers correlate with clinical cure; however, the results should be carefully interpreted given the small R² values
^b This result indicates that the higher the antibody titers, the lower the white blood cells count. This result may not sound clinically reasonable given the correlation with clinical cure. However, the explanation behind this phenomenon is unknown

ISSN: 2055-0936