Molecular epidemiology of Campylobacter jejuni in a geographically isolated country with a uniquely structured poultry industry.

In New Zealand the number of campylobacteriosis notifications increased markedly between 2000 and 2007. Notably, this country's poultry supply is different than that of many developed countries as the fresh and frozen poultry available at retail are exclusively of domestic origin. To examine the possible link between human cases and poultry, a sentinel surveillance site was established to study the molecular epidemiology of Campylobacter jejuni over a 3-year period from 2005 to 2008 using multilocus sequence typing.

Assigning the source of human campylobacteriosis in New Zealand: a comparative genetic and epidemiological approach.

Integrated surveillance of infectious multi-source diseases using a combination of epidemiology, ecology, genetics and evolution can provide a valuable risk-based approach for the control of important human pathogens. This includes a better understanding of transmission routes and the impact of human activities on the emergence of zoonoses. Until recently New Zealand had extraordinarily high and increasing rates of notified human campylobacteriosis, and our limited understanding of the source of these infections was hindering efforts to control this disease.

Source attribution of food-borne zoonoses in New Zealand: a modified Hald model.

A Bayesian approach was developed by Hald et al.((1)) to estimate the contribution of different food sources to the burden of human salmonellosis in Denmark. This article describes the development of several modifications that can be used to adapt the model to different countries and pathogens.

[Evaluation of diagnostic tests in the absence of a gold standard using an Anaplasma marginale field data set].

The evaluation of newly developed diagnostic tests (tests) commonly involves the comparison of the test outcomes (pos/neg.) of a sample of animals to those of a reference test (gold standard) in order to derive sensitivity and specificity estimates. Often, however, new tests have to be evaluated against an imperfect reference test since a true gold standard test is either too expensive or too costly to apply.

Systematic review of measures and their concepts used in published studies focusing on rehabilitation in the acute hospital and in early post-acute rehabilitation facilities.

Purpose: To identify outcome measures cited in published studies focusing on rehabilitation in the acute hospital and in early post-acute rehabilitation facilities, and to identify and quantify the concepts contained in these measures using the ICF as a reference.

Methods: Electronic searches of Medline, Embase, CINAHL, Pedro and the Cochrane Library from 1997 to March 2002 were carried out. In a first step, abstracts of the retrieved studies were checked and data on the outcome measures and certain characteristics of the included studies were extracted.