2021
DOI: 10.3390/tropicalmed6030169
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Hantaviruses in Agricultural and Forestry Workers: Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices in Italian Physicians

Abstract: Hantaviruses are viral pathogens usually endemic in rodent populations. Human exposure follows inhalation of dusts contaminated with rodent excreta, and most individuals have been infected in occupational settings heavily contaminated with rodent droppings, such as agricultural and forestry. To date, knowledge, attitudes and practices of medical professionals, especially occupational physicians (OP), regarding hantavirus disease in at-risk workers have been scarcely investigated. We investigated these topics t… Show more

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Cited by 5 publications
(7 citation statements)
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“…Third, because of their design, some of the items assessed through the knowledge test may have been affected by the "social desirability bias", with participants more frequently reporting "common sense" and "socially appropriate" answers than their actual understanding of the item assessed [63,64]. Therefore, our results could have ultimately overstated the share of individuals with an effective understanding of TeV and tetanus syndrome.…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 94%
“…Third, because of their design, some of the items assessed through the knowledge test may have been affected by the "social desirability bias", with participants more frequently reporting "common sense" and "socially appropriate" answers than their actual understanding of the item assessed [63,64]. Therefore, our results could have ultimately overstated the share of individuals with an effective understanding of TeV and tetanus syndrome.…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 94%
“…In other words, the actual representativity of the assessed occupational groups, even in the targeted areas, remains unclear. On the other hand, as previously stressed for other infectious diseases affecting agricultural workers [46,47,51], the job description could fail to appreciate other exposures, possibly associated with residential and environmental factors, as agricultural settings hardly dichotomize occupational and residential environments [46,47,52,53]. Moreover, the studies were also quite heterogenous in geographical terms, sample size, and sampling strategy [13,18,25,37].…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 98%
“…As a consequence, the status of QF in Italian agricultural and forestry workers would be quite similar to other zoonotic pathogens of occupational interest, e.g., Hantaviruses, Tickborne Encephalitis virus, and Borrelia burgdoferi (the causal agent of Lyme disease) [46][47][48][49][50]. More precisely, our analyses stress the strong association of seroprevalence for C. burnetii with the meat industry (more precisely, for abattoir personnel) and farm tasks that cause the interaction between men and animals, i.e., animal breeders, but also with veterinarians [1,14,23].…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The status of CCHFV in occupational settings could, therefore, be acknowledged as quite similar to other zoonotic pathogens of occupational interest, e.g., Hantaviruses, Tick-Borne Encephalitis Virus (TBEV), Borrelia burgdoferi (the causal agent of Lyme disease), and Coxiella burnetii (the causal agent of Q fever) [ 91 , 93 , 94 , 95 ]. The strong association of seroprevalence for CCHFV with the meat industry (more precisely, for abattoir personnel), and tasks characterized by strong interactions between personnel and animals, collectively stress the importance for implementing appropriate preventive measures and consistent medical surveillance for biological risk agents, at least in settings characterized by interaction with potentially infected animals and ticks, and/or animal blood and bodily fluids [ 5 , 6 , 13 , 23 , 52 , 59 ].…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Second, even though nearly all studies extensively reported how the samples were recruited, the actual representativity of the assessed occupational groups from the targeted areas remains unclear. This issue is particularly significant when dealing with estimates from agricultural settings and/or low-income countries, where occupational and residential environments are hardly dichotomized [ 93 , 94 ], and job descriptions could fail to appreciate the actual exposures [ 93 , 94 , 100 , 101 , 102 , 103 ]. As participants can perform several tasks at the same time (e.g., agricultural workers that also care for animals on a daily basis, possibly performing their slaughtering), corresponding sources of exposure are also highly overlapped, suggesting a quite cautious appraisal of the eventual estimates.…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%