Date of Award

7-26-2007

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Public Health (MPH)

Department

Public Health

First Advisor

Dr. Karen Gieseker - Chair

Second Advisor

Dr. Michael Eriksen

Third Advisor

Dr. Peter Gerner-Smidt

Fourth Advisor

Kelley Hise

Abstract

Salmonella causes gastrointestinal illness in humans. The purpose of the study was to determine the relative contribution of different food commodities to sporadic cases of salmonellosis (attribution analysis) caused by Salmonella Newport (SN) using Pulsed-Field Gel Electrophoresis (PFGE) patterns and antimicrobial sensitivity (AST) data submitted by public health laboratories and regulatory agencies from 2003 to 2006. The genetic relationship between isolates from non-human (348) and human (10,848) sources was studied by two unique clustering methods: UPGMA and Ward. Results show poultry was the highest contributor of human SN infections, followed by tomatoes and beef. Beef was the largest contributing food commodity of multi-drug resistant (MDR)-AmpC infection patterns. Results from this pilot study show that PFGE and AST can be useful tools in performing attribution analysis at the national level and that SN MDR-AmpC patterns are decreasing and seem to be restricted to isolates from animal sources.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.57709/1062238

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Public Health Commons

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