Surtos de listeriose têm sido causa de preocupação para indústrias de alimentos e profissionais da saúde. Os testes de rotina para detecção de Listeria sp em alimentos são demorados e envolvem o uso de meios de cultura seletivos para enriquecimento e semeadura. Neste estudo, a presença de Listeria sp, em amostras de produtos cárneos, foi investigada por testes imunológicos rápidos (Tecra® Listeria VIA, Tecra® Listeria UNIQUE e BioControl VIP® para Listeria) e pelo método clássico (Health Protection Branch, Canadá). A concordância entre o método clássico e os testes rápidos foi estabelecida com limite de 95% de confiança. Verificou-se que os testes VIA e VIP® são de fácil execução e rápidos, além de apresentarem desempenho comparável ao do método clássico, independentemente do alimento avaliado. O teste UNIQUE apresentou desempenho variável com a amostra e gerou um número elevado de resultados positivos falsos, o que dificulta seu emprego.

Outbreaks of human listeriosis have been a cause of concern to the food industry and health professionals. The routine methods for detecting Listeria sp in foods are time-consuming and involve the use of selective enrichments and culturing on selective agars. In this study, the presence of Listeria sp in 120 meat and meat products samples was investigated by three rapid immunoassays (Tecra® Listeria VIA, Listeria UNIQUE and BioControl VIP®.+ for Listeria) and a cultural procedure. The detection of Listeria sp by the cultural method was done according to Canada's Health Protection Branch Method and the detection using rapid tests was done following the manufacturers' instructions. The agreement between cultural and rapid tests was established at a confidence limit of 95%. Eighty-one samples (67.5%) were Listeria sp positive by at least one of the four methods. L. monocytogenes was present in 49.2% of the samples. Sixty-four samples (53.3%) were positive by the cultural procedure. For the rapid tests, 62 (51.7%) were VIA positive, 65 (54.2%) were VIP® positive and 41 (50.2%) were UNIQUE positive. Fifty-five samples (45,8%) were positive by the cultural method and VIA simultaneously, 55 (45.8%) by the cultural method and VIP® and 35 (43.2%) by the cultural and UNIQUE. VIA detected 4 positive samples that were not detected by any of the other methods, while VIP detected 7 positive samples and UNIQUE only 2. VIA and VIP® tests are fast and easy to execute. They also performed similarly to the cultural method despite the food matrix. UNIQUE, on the other hand, was strongly influenced by the sample type and generated a high number of false positive results what makes its use unpractical.