Spatial Effects of Livestock Farming on Human Infections With Shiga Toxin-Producing Escherichia coli O157 in Small but Densely Populated Regions: The Case of the Netherlands.

ABSTRACT: The role of environmental transmission of typically foodborne pathogens like Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) O157 is increasingly recognized. To gain more insights into spatially restricted risk factors that play a role in this transmission, we assessed the spatial association between sporadic STEC O157 human infections and the exposure to livestock (i.e. small ruminants, cattle, poultry, and pigs) in a densely populated country: the Netherlands. This was done for the years 2007-2016, using a state-of-the-art spatial analysis method in which hexagonal areas with different sizes (90, 50, 25 and 10 km²) were used in combination with a novel probability of exposure metric: the population-weighted number of animals per hexagon. To identify risk factors for STEC

SUBMITTER: Mulder AC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7682566 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature