Underdiagnosis of Foodborne Hepatitis A, the Netherlands, 2008–20101
Emerging Infectious Diseases·
- DOI
- 10.3201/eid2004.130753
- PMID
- 24655539
- PMCID
- PMC3966399
- OpenAlex
- W2118196464
- Study type
- Journal article
- Publisher
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
- Article type
- journal-article
- Integrity
- current
Why this research matters now
The article is relevant to outbreak recognition and surveillance methods for hepatitis A, especially where routine systems may miss food-associated cases. It frames the work as important for understanding how a complex food market may affect detection outside endemic settings.
Structured evidence summary
Research question
The paper asks whether foodborne hepatitis A was being missed in routine detection in the Netherlands during 2008-2010, and whether adding strain typing changed how often food was considered the likely source of infection.
Study design
Observational analysis that combined routine surveillance with real-time viral strain sequencing. The abstract also indicates use of case reporting and questionnaire-based interpretation of source.
Population and setting
Reported hepatitis A case-patients in the Netherlands from 2008 to 2010. The abstract states that serum from 248 of 421 reported cases was sequenced.
Main findings
The abstract reports that suspected foodborne transmission rose from 4% of reported cases without typing to 16% after typing was added. It also states that outbreaks of foodborne hepatitis A are seldom recognized in routine practice.
Public-health relevance
The article is relevant to outbreak recognition and surveillance methods for hepatitis A, especially where routine systems may miss food-associated cases. It frames the work as important for understanding how a complex food market may affect detection outside endemic settings.
Important limitations
The abstract notes that identifying foodborne infections is difficult because of the long incubation period and patient recall bias. This summary is also limited to the supplied single-article abstract and metadata; the original paper is needed for fuller methods and interpretation.
GIDS interpretation
In GIDS terms, this is a discoverable surveillance-focused study on hepatitis A transmission inference in the Netherlands, indexed under surveillance and transmission dynamics. It provides contextual evidence about under-recognition in the study setting, but it should not be treated as live surveillance confirmation.
Related GIDS surveillance
Literature context does not validate, explain, or change a surveillance signal. Exact and contextual relationships are shown separately.
Evidence relationships
This article has 10 auditable classifier relationships to diseases, places, topics, and study design.