Sentinel surveillance for international Shigella by a quarantine station in Japan.

Publisher: Cambridge University Press Country of Publication: England NLM ID: 8703737 Publication Model: Print Cited Medium: Print ISSN: 0950-2688 (Print) Linking ISSN: 09502688 NLM ISO Abbreviation: Epidemiol Infect Subsets: MEDLINE

Original Publication: Cambridge Eng : Cambridge University Press

Travel*; Communicable Disease Control/*methods ; Disease Outbreaks/*prevention & control ; Dysentery, Bacillary/*epidemiology ; Shigella sonnei/*isolation & purification; Aircraft ; DNA, Bacterial/analysis ; Dysentery, Bacillary/diagnosis ; Electrophoresis, Gel, Pulsed-Field ; Female ; Humans ; Incidence ; International Cooperation ; Japan/epidemiology ; Male ; Polymorphism, Restriction Fragment Length ; Quarantine ; Risk Assessment ; Sensitivity and Specificity ; Sentinel Surveillance

The Japanese quarantine system monitors incoming passengers to detect imported pathogens at international airports. At one airport, we found that 74% of 13 315 travellers returning with diarrhoea had visited only one country before entering Japan. On the basis of our results, we hypothesized that the international distribution and potential source of bacterial strains could be inferred by analysing strains isolated from travellers returning to Japan. In order to demonstrate the potential for this system, we randomly selected five Shigella sonnei strains and examined their restriction fragment length polymorphism patterns. One set of strains appeared to be closely related, while three sets, isolated from travellers who visited different countries were possibly related. These results suggest that international distributions and potential sources of S. sonnei may be inferred by monitoring isolates from passengers arriving at a Japanese quarantine station.

0 (DNA, Bacterial)

Date Created: 20050730 Date Completed: 20050830 Latest Revision: 20190606

20240628

PMC2870287

10.1017/s0950268805003985

16050505