Foodborne Outbreak investigation: Al-Ahsa, Saudi Arabia, 2021. A retrospective cohort study
ABSTRACT
Background:
On 10 September 2021, Al-Ahsa General Health Directorate reported unexpected number of patients had presented with gastrointestinal symptoms. All the patients gave a history of sharing a common meal as they ate from dinner was served at the mother's house the day before.
Objective:
We investigated to verify the outbreak, determine its magnitude, identify the source and implement control measures.
Methods:
A retrospective cohort design was conducted. Cases were defined as any person who ate dinner at the family gathering on the 9th of September 2021 and developed any or a combination of the following symptoms: diarrhea, vomiting, fever, or abdominal pain within 26 hours of food consumption. We collected information on demographics, symptoms, and food history using a semi-structured questionnaire. We reviewed hospital records for symptoms and Vital sings. We reviewed available laboratory results for cases, we conducted active case search to identify more cases. statistical analyses were performed using SPSS 21.0.
Results:
Twenty subjects were defined as cases (74%) and seven as non-cases (26%). among cases, 16 were females (80%), and 4 were males (20%). The ages ranged between 2–70 years. Among cases (59.3%) had vomiting, (59.3%) had a fever, (48.1%) developed diarrhea, (25%) abdominal pain. The incubation period ranged from 10-26 hours (mean 17.8). The relative risks and p- value were calculated for food items to assess the association between consumption of individual food items and subsequent illness. Among 8 food items consumed, red pasta with chicken (Relative Risk RR= 3.14, 95% CI = 3.2-424.6) and pizza (RR= 1.73, 95% CI = 1.74-42.2) were significantly associated with illness.
Conclusions:
According to the epidemiological investigation, symptoms, incubation period, and laboratory results there might be some differential diagnosis, but we were unable to more definitively identify the source of the outbreak. We recommend more education to the households about food safety
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.