Years of potential life lost for six major enteric pathogens, Germany, 2004–2008

Abstract

SUMMARYIn industrialized countries, acute infectious enteric diseases are usually mild, but they can also cause death. They do so, however, at different ages. Using 2004Using -2008 German notification data, we computed and compared crude and premature mortality [three different measures of years of potential life lost (YPLL)] of illnesses caused by Campylobacter spp., Listeria monocytogenes, norovirus, rotavirus, non-typhoidal Salmonella spp., and Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC). Among y1 . 5 million notified illnesses, those caused by norovirus were the most frequent. The highest annual mortality was registered for salmonellosis (0 . 55/1 000 000 population), but listeriosis accounted for the highest number of YPLL (n=4245). Disregarding death at advanced age (i.e. >70 years), STEC illness (n=757) and rotavirus gastroenteritis (n=648) ranked second and third, following listeriosis (n=2306). Routine surveillance captures only a fraction of all incident cases and deaths, under-ascertaining the true burden of disease. Weighting death by age permits a different view on the disease burden individual enteric pathogens cause and particularly underscores the public health importance of listeriosis prevention.

Epidemiology of norovirus gastroenteritis in Germany 2001–2009: eight seasons of routine surveillance

“…Our results are comparable to the 0·03% in longterm care facilities in Australia [22] and the 0·07% described in a review of published outbreaks [20], considering that our dataset includes sporadic cases that are younger and less likely to develop complications. Our mortality rate of 0·5/100 000 cases per season in the elderly (575 years) is lower than modelling estimates from the USA, UK and The Netherlands of 2/100 000, 0·6/100 000 and 3/100 000, respectively 8 11 2 5 8 11 2 5 8 11 2 5 8 11 2 5 8 11 2 5 ll.4 all ll.2 ll.7 Gll other Gl all GII recomb [3,23,24], but comparable when considering that the surveillance system captures only half of norovirusassociated deaths compared to the German causeof-death statistics [25].…”

Disease burden of selected gastrointestinal pathogens in Australia, 2010

“…6 The viral study pathogens are not nationally notifiable in Australia, and so we applied population mortality rates for rotavirus and norovirus reported in two German studies to the 2010 Australian population. 35,36 For mild AGE cases (pathogen-specific), we subtracted the sum of outpatient, hospitalized, and fatal AGE cases from total AGE cases for each pathogen. This ensured internal consistency in our pathogen-specific estimates.…”

The zoonotic agent Salmonella

“…Worldwide it has a high economical and public health burden of disease. In Germany salmonellosis ranked fourth among six major enteric pathogens considering to YPLL (years of potential life lost) with the highest mortality rate observed, reasoned by no reported death in the group of children (Murray and Lopez 1996;Tauxe et al 2010;Werber et al 2013). …”