Measuring Environmental Exposure to Enteric Pathogens in Low-Income Settings: Review and Recommendations of an Interdisciplinary Working Group.

ABSTRACT: Infections with enteric pathogens impose a heavy disease burden, especially among young children in low-income countries. Recent findings from randomized controlled trials of water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions have raised questions about current methods for assessing environmental exposure to enteric pathogens. Approaches for estimating sources and doses of exposure suffer from a number of shortcomings, including reliance on imperfect indicators of fecal contamination instead of actual pathogens and estimating exposure indirectly from imprecise measurements of pathogens in the environment and human interaction therewith. These shortcomings limit the potential for effective surveillance of exposures, identification of important sources and modes of transmission, and evaluation of

SUBMITTER: Goddard FGB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7547864 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature