Development of a universal plate-agglutination test for detecting Haemophilus parasuis

Due to the serovar diversity in Haemophilus (H.) parasuis, it is difficult to develop a universal serological method for detection of this pathogen. Here, we report a universal plate-agglutination test for detecting H. parasuis. Diagnostic antisera were prepared by mixing antisera of serovars 4, 5, 12, 13 and 14 in the optimized ratio. The results of the plate-agglutination test showed that the diagnostic antisera could agglutinate with all 15 reference strains of H. parasuis and 74/75 clinical isolates. Further, the specificity of the method was validated with 22 bacterial strains from 12 related species.