Epidemiological Studies

One of the most useful outcomes of studying epidemiology is learning how to evaluate critically the scientific literature (Aschengrau & Seage, 2008). Critical assessment of this literature is an important skill for public health professionals because the findings of epidemiologic research inform so many activities (Aschengrau & Seage, 2008). Munnoch et al. (2008) done epidemiological studies on S.Saintpaul infection occurred in Australia during October 2006 and found that cantaloupe production and processing practices pose a potential public health threat requiring regulatory and community education interventions. Based on main journal article written upon this subject, this article will analyse how epidemiological research has helped us understand the pattern of study conducted, source population, methods used and the interpretation of the results.

STUDY OBJECT AND DESIGN

This assignment reviews the evidence in the context of epidemiological research linking the consumption of cantaloupe to S.Saintpaul occurred in Australia affected three jurisdictions, New South Wales, Victoria and Australian Capital Territory and relatively uncommon in remaining states. Munnoch et al. (2008) conducted a multi-jurisdictional case-control study to test the hypothesis that S.Saintpaul infection was associated with the consumption of fresh produce items including cantaloupe. In addition, hypothesis generation method was used on cases according to which 14 newly notified S.Saintapaul cases were interviewed with a standardized retrospective hypothesis generating and trawling questionnaire to identify possible foodborne and environmental risk factors for infection. Food exposures commonly reported by these cases were cantaloupe (n=11), cucumber...

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...ars), found that cases aged <16 years were significantly more likely to have consumed cantaloupe (OR 17.0, 95% CI 4.3–78.8), cantaloupe as part of a fruit salad (OR 10.0, 95% CI 1.6–72.6), and strawberries (OR 3.8, 95% CI 1.2–13.3) during the 4-day exposure period than controls, whilst for cases agedo16 years, consumption of cantaloupe (OR 7.1, 95% CI 1.7–31.3) was the only variable where a statistically significant association between exposure and illness was identified (Munnoch et al., 2008).Therefore in Multivariate analysis Cantaloupe, strawberries, pears, gender, jurisdiction and age group were included in a multivariate model. After adjusting for these factors, only consumption of cantaloupe (adjusted OR 23.9, 95% CI 5.1–112.4) was found to be significantly associated with illness. This result was not affected by age-matched analysis (Munnoch et al., 2008).