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The Epidemic Curve Of Salmonella

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Results: For the seven interviews that the team conducted, three of the cases had eaten hamburger or ground beef, no cases had drunk raw milk, only one case had traveled outside Michigan, no restaurant or social event was identified in common, all of the cases had consumed lettuce, and six had eaten alfalfa sprouts. Appendix A shows the line listing of people who became ill with E.coli or E.coli symptoms from June 15 to July 15. Based on those findings no obvious linkages between patients were found. Appendix B shows the epidemic curve for this outbreak. The epidemic curve showed that the onset of illness among cases occurred from June to July with largest number occurring on June 22nd. Based on the appendix D, DNA fingerprinting …show more content…

Facility A and B were the only facilities that sprouted alfalfa seed in the state. Sprouts grown by facility A at the time of the outbreak came from two lots of seed: one from Idaho and one from Australia. At this point, the investigators became aware of a concurrent outbreak of E. coli infection in Virginia. CDC subtyped the strains from Virginia and identified the same PFGE pattern as in the Michigan outbreak.
Discussion:
In order to determine if the teams hypothesis was correct we looked at specific criteria like: Temporality, strength of association, dose-response, reproducibility, biological plausibility, and other explanations, cessation of exposure, specificity, and experimental evidence. From the case-control study, there is strong epidemiologic evidence linking alfalfa sprouts to the outbreak. There is clear evidence of temporality because the exposure to alfalfa sprouts came before the onset of E.coli symptoms. Because the cases came from at least 10 different counties in one state it seems unlikely that contamination of the sprouts occurred in the homes of the cases or individually in all the stores where they were purchased. Because two sprouting facilities were associated with the implicated alfalfa sprouts and a single lot of seeds were common to

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