Epidemiological studies rarely provide unequivocal data on the effects of toxic substances on human health. Unlike experimental studies, pertinent variables frequently cannot be controlled and some are often unknown. Nevertheless, these limitations can be dealt with by various facets of an epidemiological investigation. These include, the choice of a study design, selection of controls or compa...

abstract        typing of bacteria is an important part of epidemiological studies on nosocomial infections. bacterial identification methods have dramatically improved in recent years, which is mainly due to advancements in the field of molecular biotechnology. in many cases, molecular techniques have replaced phenotypic typing methods. currently, a wide range of bacterial typing techniques is...

Summary Introduction Bacteria of the genus Legionella cause Legionnaires’ disease (atypical pneumonia, often with a severe clinical course) and Pontiac fever (self-limiting infection flu-like symptoms). spp. are commonly found in natural aquatic environments artificial water distribution systems. Material & Methods An epidemiological analysis hospital supply systems was based on results obt...

The tuberculosis (TB) incidence rate in Brussels-Capital Region is 3-fold higher than in Belgium as a whole. Eight years after the realization of initial prospective population-based molecular epidemiology investigations in this Region, a similar study over the period 2010-2013 was conducted. TB strains isolated from 945 patients were submitted to genotyping by standardized 24-locus-MIRU-VNTR t...

We study the epidemiology of a viral disease with dose-dependent replication and transmission by nesting a differential-equation model of the within-host viral dynamics inside a between-host epidemiological model. We use two complementary approaches for nesting the models: an agent-based (AB) simulation and a mean-field approximation called the growth-matrix (GM) model. We find that although in...

OBJECTIVES To analyze the growth of epidemiological research in Brazil in comparison to the total number of indexed publications worldwide and from several Latin American and Caribbean countries. METHODS A Boolean combination of epidemiological key words was used to search the MEDLINE/PubMed database for articles published between 1985 and 2004. These articles were divided into 4 time periods...