abstract
- Epidemiological studies are valuable tools for investigating the origin of outbreaks and also sporadic cases in order to better understand the circumstances of foodborne disease occurrence. It is common to report ad hoc analyses of compiled data of food-borne disease outbreaks, however, such analyses including sporadic cases remain relatively rare. In the literature, several case-control and cohort studies have been published that investigate associations of sporadic foodborne diseases with diverse exposure pathways, foods, food handling practices and health pre-conditions in different populations. This special issue compiles several epidemiological studies of spo- radic cases of leading foodborne infectious diseases, and summarises the measurements of associations (odds ratios) of risk factors with the occurrence of sporadic cases. These odds ratio estimates in combination with the frequency of exposure to risk factors will allow the contribu- tions of the different risk factors to be assessed based on calculations of attributable fractions. Source attribution has been traditionally accom- plished by different methods such as epidemiological studies, microbial subtyping models, comparative exposure assessments and expert’s knowledge elicitation. Yet, there has been very few publications using meta-analysis to better understand risk factor identification and help prioritize and quantify interventions measures to reduce the impact of foodborne diseases.