Risk factors for typhoid and paratyphoid fever in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Context: The proportion of paratyphoid fever cases to typhoid fever cases may change due to urbanization and increased dependency on food purchased from street vendors. For containment of paratyphoid a different strategy may be needed than for typhoid, because risk factors for disease may not coincide and current typhoid vaccines do not protect against paratyphoid fever.

Objective: To determine risk factors for typhoid and paratyphoid fever in an endemic area.

Design, Setting, And Participants: Community-based case-control study conducted from June 2001 to February 2003 in hospitals and outpatient health centers in Jatinegara district, Jakarta, Indonesia. Enrolled participants were 1019 consecutive patients with fever lasting 3 or more days, from which 69 blood culture-confirmed typhoid cases, 24 confirmed paratyphoid cases, and 289 control patients with fever but without Salmonella bacteremia were interviewed, plus 378 randomly selected community controls.

Main Outcome Measures: Blood culture-confirmed typhoid or paratyphoid fever; risk factors for both diseases.

Results: In 1019 fever patients we identified 88 (9%) Salmonella typhi and 26 (3%) Salmonella paratyphi A infections. Paratyphoid fever among cases was independently associated with consumption of food from street vendors (comparison with community controls: odds ratio [OR], 3.34; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.41-7.91; with fever controls: OR, 5.17; 95% CI, 2.12-12.60) and flooding (comparison with community controls: OR, 4.52; 95% CI, 1.90-10.73; with fever controls: OR, 3.25; 95% CI, 1.31-8.02). By contrast, independent risk factors for typhoid fever using the community control group were mostly related to the household, ie, to recent typhoid fever in the household (OR, 2.38; 95% CI, 1.03-5.48); no use of soap for handwashing (OR, 1.91; 95% CI, 1.06-3.46); sharing food from the same plate (OR, 1.93; 95% CI, 1.10-3.37), and no toilet in the household (OR, 2.20; 95% CI, 1.06-4.55). Also, typhoid fever was associated with young age in years (OR, 0.96; 95% CI, 0.94-0.98). In comparison with fever controls, risk factors for typhoid fever were use of ice cubes (OR, 2.27; 95% CI, 1.31-3.93) and female sex (OR, 1.79; 95% CI, 1.04-3.06). Fecal contamination of drinking water was not associated with typhoid or paratyphoid fever. We did not detect fecal carriers among food handlers in the households.

Conclusions: In Jakarta, typhoid and paratyphoid fever are associated with distinct routes of transmission, with the risk factors for disease either mainly within the household (typhoid) or outside the household (paratyphoid).