Incubation periods of enteric illnesses in foodborne outbreaks, United States, 1998-2013.

ABSTRACT: Early in a foodborne disease outbreak investigation, illness incubation periods can help focus case interviews, case definitions, clinical and environmental evaluations and predict an aetiology. Data describing incubation periods are limited. We examined foodborne disease outbreaks from laboratory-confirmed, single aetiology, enteric bacterial and viral pathogens reported to United States foodborne disease outbreak surveillance from 1998-2013. We grouped pathogens by clinical presentation and analysed the reported median incubation period among all illnesses from the implicated pathogen for each outbreak as the outbreak incubation period. Outbreaks from preformed bacterial toxins (Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus cereus and Clostridium perfringens) had the shortest outbreak incubation perio

SUBMITTER: Chai SJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6805792 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature