The Interagency Food Safety Analytics Collaboration
("IFSAC"), created in 2011 to study the most common food
sources linked to specific foodborne illnesses, has recently published a paper in emerging infectious
diseases, titled "Comparing Characteristics of Sporadic and
Outbreak-Associated Foodborne Illnesses, United States,
2004–2011." This article compares some
characteristics of outbreak and sporadic (non-outbreak) human
illnesses caused by Salmonella, Escherichia coli
(E. coli) O157, Listeria monocytogenes, and
Campylobacter. The analysis indicates that
Campylobacter, Listeria monocytogenes, and E.
coli O157 outbreak illnesses are not significantly different
from sporadic illnesses with respect to patients' illness
severity, gender, and age. With regard to Salmonella
outbreak illnesses, these are not significantly different from
sporadic illnesses with respect to illness severity and gender;
however, the percentage of outbreak illnesses in the youngest age
category (0–3 years) was substantially lower compared with
the other age groups. Such analyses are essential to advancing
scientific progress in the field.
In an unrelated effort on pathogen informatics, on June 27, 2016,
FDA published videos of FDA's GenomeTrakr
network—a network that was established to facilitate the
sharing of pathogen sequence data among public health agencies,
academia, and the food industry, with the goal of preventing
large-scale foodborne illness outbreaks.
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