Abstract
Brucella spp. causes Malta fever a zoonotic disease that can be transmitted to human by consumption of raw milk and unpasteurized dairy products like soft cheese, whose production is wide spread in Iraq. Because of the harm of this disease on public health and the difficulty of treatment; therefore this study included the isolation of Brucella from human (final host) and raw milk (the main source of infection). Two isolates were obtained, isolate (1) was isolated from (23) blood speciemens taken from patients showed clinical findings of malta fever and their serum gave high agglutination titer in Rose Bengal Test, the second isolate (2) was isolated from (37) milk sample collected from regions (Mahweer, Manarat Shabbak and Bartillah) from sheep suffered from abortion and their serum gave positive results with Rose Bengal Test. After the diagnostic biochemical tests were done, we found that as aresult these two isolates belong to the species Brucella melitensis. It has also been found that both isolates didn’t withstand the decreasing of pH in yoghurt, the results also showed the use of starter bacteria Lactobacillus delbreukii subsp. bulgaricus alone or with the combination of L. delbreukii subsp. bulgaricus with Streptococcus thermophilus gave effective results on the resistance of these two isolates in yogurt as compared to the use of S. thermophillus alone.
