Abstract
Campylobacteriosis has been the most common food-associated notifiable infectious disease in Switzerland since 1995. Contact with and ingestion of raw or undercooked broilers are considered the dominant risk factors for infection. In this study, we investigated the temporal relationship between the disease incidence in humans and the prevalence of Campylobacter in broilers in Switzerland from 2008 to 2012. We use a time-series approach to describe the pattern of the disease by incorporating seasonal effects and autocorrelation. The analysis shows that prevalence of Campylobacter in broilers, with a 2-week lag, has a significant impact on disease incidence in humans. Therefore Campylobacter cases in humans can be partly explained by contagion through broiler meat. We also found a strong autoregressive effect in human illness, and a significant increase of illness during Christmas and New Year's holidays. In a final analysis, we corrected for the sampling error of prevalence in broilers and the results gave similar conclusions.
Highlights
Campylobacter species are present in most warm-Campylobacter is a major foodborne pathogen causing campylobacteriosis in humans and is the most common bacterium that causes gastroenteritis worldwide [1]
Blooded animals and campylobacteriosis is transmitted to humans from animals or animal products
When including a seasonality adjustment, the negative binomial model fits much better in terms of Akaike’s Information Criterion (AIC) than the corresponding Poisson model. This indicates that the number of campylobacteriosis cases in humans is overdispersed
Summary
Campylobacter species are present in most warm-Campylobacter is a major foodborne pathogen causing campylobacteriosis in humans and is the most common bacterium that causes gastroenteritis worldwide [1]. The onset of disease symptoms usually occurs 2–5 days after infection, but can range from 1 to 10 days [2]. Since 2005, campylobacteriosis has been the most common food-associated notifiable illness in Switzerland. Transmission occurs through consumption of contaminated food, water and milk products, as well as directly from animals and the environment [4, 5]. Several studies show that the incidence of Campylobacter colonization in broiler flocks and the incidence of campylobacteriosis in humans show a concordant seasonality in Europe [8, 9]. Campylobacter illness in humans has a clear seasonal pattern with an annual peak during the summer, which
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