Attack Rate in Food Poisoning: Order in Chaos.

Attack Rate in Food Poisoning: Order in Chaos. Jpn J Infect Dis. 2015 Apr 10; Authors: Yoshikura H Abstract The frequency distribution of number of patients and number of eaters was near lognormal for almost all the food poisonings. The median and range remained almost unchanged over time though number of incidents per year varied. The number of patients and number of eaters were mutually uncorrelated for many of the food poisonings, however.A regular pattern relating number of patients and eaters emerged for food poisonings occurring seasonally at a high incidence, such as, those caused by norovirus or Campylobacter; comb teeth-like pattern in the plot that relates ranking number of patients and ranking number of eaters, and fingerprint- or onionskin-like pattern in the plot that relates attack rate and number of patients or eaters. For food poisonings whose incidence was low without showing seasonality, such as, those caused by C. perfringens, the pattern was amorphous in the both plots. Further analysis indicated that the occurrence of these patterns was determined by the combination of pathogens and services, not by either one alone. The emergence of regular pattern may be linked to the "complexity" nature of food poisoning. PMID: 25866112 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Japanese Journal of Infectious Diseases - Category: Infectious Diseases Authors: Tags: Jpn J Infect Dis Source Type: research