Attributing the Human Disease Burden of Foodborne Infections to Specific Sources

Abstract

Foodborne diseases are an important cause of human illness worldwide. Humans acquire these infections from a variety of sources and routes of transmission. Many efforts have been made in the last decades to prevent and control foodborne diseases, particularly foodborne zoonoses. However, information on the impact of these interventions is limited. To identify and prioritize successful food safety interventions, it is important to attribute the burden of human illness to the specific sources. Defining scientific concepts and harmonizing terminology for ''source attribution'' is essential for understanding and improving attribution methodologies and for sharing knowledge within the scientific community. We propose harmonized nomenclature, and describe the various approaches for human illness source attribution and their usefulness to address specific public health questions.

Future challenges to microbial food safety

“…Each method is subject to specific biases, and may attribute illness to different 596 points in the food chain. Therefore, interpreting the results from attribution studies should be 597 done with care (Pires et al, 2009). 598…”

Case-Control Studies of Sporadic Enteric Infections: A Review and Discussion of Studies Conducted Internationally from 1990 to 2009

“…Attribution of foodborne illness to specific food commodities Painter et al, 2009;Pires et al, 2009) has become a high priority for regulatory authorities in many countries. Thus, using consistent methods to define foods and food commodities across countries is becoming increasingly valuable.…”

“…Case-control studies are an important epidemiologic approach for attributing enteric illnesses to specific risk factors or exposures, by comparing recent exposures in populations of people with the disease of interest to those in controls who do not have the disease (Breslow et al, 1996;Batz et al, 2005;Scallan and Angulo, 2007b;Pires et al, 2009). Casecontrol studies are often used during enteric disease outbreak investigations, but have been increasingly used to identify risk factors for sporadic illness (Dwyer et al, 1994).…”

Detection of Salmonella human carriers in Colombian outbreak areas

“…Several mathematic and statistical approaches, such as a Bayesian model, have been developed to quantify the contributions of each major animal-food sources to human salmonellosis [15,16]. Results have identified differing sources, based on the geographic origin of the studies, that vary among eggs, pork, and layers as the most important reservoir of human salmonellosis caused in Europe by S. Enteritidis [15][16][17]. However, in Finland and Sweden, most cases were travel related.…”