Factors Associated with Increased and Decreased Risk of Campylobacter Infection: A Prospective Case-Control Study in Norway

Abstract

In 1999-2000, a prospective case-control study of sporadic, domestically acquired campylobacteriosis was conducted in three counties in Norway to identify preventable risk factors and potentially protective factors. A total of 212 cases and 422 population controls matched by age, sex, and geographic area were enrolled. In conditional logistic regression analysis, the following factors were found to be independently associated with an increased risk of Campylobacter infection: drinking undisinfected water, eating at barbecues, eating poultry bought raw, having occupational exposure to animals, and eating undercooked pork. The following factors were independently related to a decreased risk: eating mutton, eating raw fruits or berries, and swimming. Results indicated that infection is more likely to occur as a result of cross-contamination from raw poultry products than because of poultry consumption per se. Drinking undisinfected water, reported by 53% of cases, was a leading risk factor in this study. Drinking water may constitute the common reservoir linking infection in humans and animals, including poultry and wild birds. Insight into the ecology of Campylobacter in freshwater ecosystems may be required to understand the epidemiology of campylobacteriosis. The possibility that certain foods confer protection against campylobacteriosis deserves exploration.

Risk factors for indigenousCampylobacter jejuniandCampylobacter coliinfections in The Netherlands: a case-control study

“…Such 'protective ' effects have been observed in many previous casecontrol studies [13,15,18]. Frequently mentioned explanations are differences in food preferences or immune status between cases and controls, statistical coincidences or bias.…”

“…0) 14 (7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18) Contact with persons with gastroenteritis symptoms outside the household (20) 21 (20) 38 (8) 2 . 8 (1 .…”

“…Numerous case-control studies in the past 20 years have focused on the identification of risk factors for sporadic Campylobacter infections, of which consumption of poultry is most frequently reported [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. Other frequently reported risk factors are consumption of unpasteurized milk [14,15,20], eating in a restaurant [14,17,19,21], contact with pets, especially puppies [13,14,16,19,22,23], contact with farm animals [13,14,17,19,20,23,24] and foreign travel [13-16, 19, 21].…”

Public Health Hazard of Zoonotic Campylobacter jejuni Reference to Egyptian Regional and Seasonal Variations

“…Case-control studies of food borne infection rates have estimated that 50-70% of Campylobacter illness is due to consumption of contaminated poultry and their products (Tauxe et al, 1985;Allos, 2001;Kapperud et al, 2003). Several studies examined thermophilic Campylobacter in poultry and the findings indicated prevalence ranges of the Campylobacter from 3-98% with C. jejuni as the main isolates (Kapperud et al, 2003;Cardinale et al, 2003).…”

Risk factors for infection withCampylobacter jejuni flaAgenotypes

“…Case-control studies of potential risk factors for campylobacteriosis have been undertaken in several countries [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] including Australia [12,13]. Consumption of chicken is the most commonly identified risk factor for sporadic campylobacteriosis.…”