De Nardo P
Laboratorio di Medicina Veterinaria, Istituto Superiore di Sanitá Roma.
Ann Ist Super Sanita. 1997;33(4):587-93.
The correlation between environmental pollution and human health is one of the most important topics in public health. Environmentally-induced diseases generally show multifactorial etiology and their occurrence is dose-related; they can be included among the emergent diseases also in veterinary medicine. The epidemiological study of naturally occurring environmental diseases in animals, regarded as sentinel health events, can provide valuable information on agents being studied in human environmental epidemiological research. The epidemiologic aspects of naturally occurring diseases of domestic animals have so far received inadequate attention. Surveys have usually consisted of descriptive pathologic reports or of simple listings of case. There has been little or no attempt to relate the number of cases to the underlying population, thus there is little information on the prevalence rates of various animal diseases compiled according to age, breed, sex or environment. This paper reviews epidemiological studies of pet animals with spontaneously occurring respiratory diseases and attempts to determine the value of the animal in general and the dog in particular as a comparative model for environmental health.
环境污染与人类健康之间的关联是公共卫生领域最重要的话题之一。环境诱发疾病通常呈现多因素病因，其发生与剂量相关；在兽医学中，它们也可被纳入新发疾病范畴。对动物自然发生的环境疾病进行流行病学研究，将其视为哨兵健康事件，可为人类环境流行病学研究中正在研究的病原体提供有价值的信息。迄今为止，家畜自然发生疾病的流行病学方面受到的关注不足。调查通常包括描述性病理报告或简单的病例清单。几乎没有或根本没有尝试将病例数与潜在种群联系起来，因此，根据年龄、品种、性别或环境编制的各种动物疾病患病率信息很少。本文综述了对患有自发性呼吸道疾病的宠物进行的流行病学研究，并试图确定一般动物尤其是狗作为环境卫生比较模型的价值。
