Hall G, McDonald L, Majowicz S E, Scallan E, Kirk M, Sockett P, Angulo F J
National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health and Medical School, Australian National University, Canberra Australian Capital Territory 0200 , Australia.
Epidemiol Infect. 2010 Jan;138(1):117-24. doi: 10.1017/S0950268809990112. Epub 2009 Jun 4.
Estimates of the burden of foodborne disease rely on attributing a proportion of syndromic gastroenteritis to foodborne transmission. Persons with syndromic diarrhoea/vomiting can also present with concurrent respiratory symptoms that could be due to respiratory infections, gastrointestinal infections, or both. This distinction is important when estimating the foodborne disease burden but has rarely been considered. Using data from population surveys from Australia, Canada and the USA we describe the effect of excluding persons with respiratory and associated symptoms from the case definition of gastroenteritis. Excluding persons first with respiratory symptoms, or second with respiratory symptoms plus fever and headache, resulted in a decrease in the weighted estimates of acute gastroenteritis of about 10-50% depending on the exclusion criteria. This has the potential to have a very significant impact on estimates of the burden of foodborne infections using syndromic case definitions of acute gastroenteritis.
食源性疾病负担的估计依赖于将一定比例的症状性肠胃炎归因于食源性传播。有症状性腹泻/呕吐的人也可能同时出现呼吸道症状，这可能是由于呼吸道感染、胃肠道感染或两者兼有。在估计食源性疾病负担时，这种区分很重要，但很少被考虑。利用来自澳大利亚、加拿大和美国的人口调查数据，我们描述了将有呼吸道及相关症状的人排除在肠胃炎病例定义之外的影响。根据排除标准，先排除有呼吸道症状的人，或其次排除有呼吸道症状加发热和头痛的人，导致急性肠胃炎加权估计数减少约10%-50%。这有可能对使用急性肠胃炎症状性病例定义的食源性感染负担估计产生非常重大的影响。
