Devaux I, Varela-Santos C, Payne-Hallström L, Takkinen J, Bogaardt C, Coulombier D
European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control,Solna,Sweden.
Epidemiol Infect. 2015 Dec;143(16):3468-74. doi: 10.1017/S0950268814003823. Epub 2015 Apr 24.
Early investigation of travel-related cases in an outbreak of an emerging infectious disease can provide useful information to epidemiologists to characterize the exposure, while they may differ in demographic profiles from cases reported in the country where the outbreak has occurred. During the spring 2011 E. coli outbreak in Germany, we proposed a methodological approach to collect a minimal set of demographic and clinical data that are relatively easy to obtain and available at an early stage of an outbreak investigation. Ninety-eight STEC O104 travel-related cases were reported in a survey by seven EU countries, Switzerland, Canada and the USA. We found a mean incubation period (n = 50) of 8·5 days, which confirmed previous estimations communicated by the Robert Koch Institute. No significant association was found between the duration of the incubation period and possible demographic and clinical factors, although the older the age, the shorter the incubation period that was observed. Such approach and observations are informative for further investigations of outbreaks of enterohaemorrhagic E. coli or other emerging infectious diseases.
对新发传染病暴发中与旅行相关病例的早期调查，可为流行病学家提供有用信息以描述暴露情况，尽管这些病例的人口统计学特征可能与疫情发生国报告的病例有所不同。在2011年春季德国大肠杆菌暴发期间，我们提出了一种方法，用于收集一组最少的人口统计学和临床数据，这些数据相对容易获取且在疫情调查的早期阶段即可获得。七个欧盟国家、瑞士、加拿大和美国在一项调查中报告了98例与旅行相关的产志贺毒素大肠杆菌（STEC）O104病例。我们发现平均潜伏期（n = 50）为8.5天，这证实了罗伯特·科赫研究所之前通报的估计。尽管观察到年龄越大潜伏期越短，但在潜伏期持续时间与可能的人口统计学和临床因素之间未发现显著关联。这种方法和观察结果对进一步调查肠出血性大肠杆菌或其他新发传染病的暴发具有参考价值。
