Article Text
Abstract
Objective To estimate the number of deaths from foodborne disease in the UK from 11 key pathogens.
Design Four different models were developed using data from a range of sources. These included enhanced surveillance, outbreaks, death certificates and hospital episode statistics data. For each model, median estimates were produced with 95% credible intervals (CrI). The results from the different models were compared.
Results The estimates for foodborne deaths for each pathogen from the different models were consistent, with CrIs largely overlapping. Based on the preferred model for each pathogen, foodborne norovirus is estimated to cause 56 deaths per year (95% CrI 32 to 92), foodborne Salmonella 33 deaths (95% CrI 7 to 159), foodborne Listeria monocytogenes 26 deaths (95% CrI 24 to 28), foodborne Clostridium perfringens 25 deaths (95% CrI 1 to 163) and foodborne Campylobacter 21 deaths (95% CrI 8 to 47). The considerable overlap in the CrIs means it is not possible to make any firm conclusions on ranking. Most of these deaths occur in those aged over 75 years. Foodborne deaths from Shigella, Cryptosporidium, Giardia, adenovirus, astrovirus and rotavirus are all rare.
Conclusions We estimate that there are 180 deaths per year in the UK (95% CrI 113 to 359) caused by foodborne disease based on these 11 pathogens. While this is a small fraction of the estimated 2.4 million cases of foodborne illness per year it still illustrates the potential severity of these illnesses demonstrating the importance in continuing efforts to reduce these infections.
- infectious disease
- Campylobacter
- Salmonella
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Footnotes
Contributors DH planned the research and analysis. He obtained the ONS death data and hospital episode data. He produced some of the tables and made amendments to model. He wrote the majority of the paper pulling other contributors sections together. Responsible for overall content. LT undertook the initial bootstrapping and created the distributions for each model and wrote the methodology sections. She produced the years of potential life lost analysis. She reviewed and edited paper. NM updated the bootstrapping and distributions based on more recent data. She obtained laboratory report data. She created some of the tables in the report, produced additional analysis requested by the peer reviewers. She reviewed and edited paper. She quality assured models. AK produced an overarching model that could run estimates for deaths alongside foodborne cases, general practitioner presentations and hospital admissions. He obtained outbreaks data and contributed to the ‘Data sources’ section. He reviewed and edited paper.
Funding All authors were employed by the Food Standards Agency at the time of the work. The Food Standards Agency paid for summaries of mortality data from the Office for National Statistics and hospital episodes data held by NHS Digital.
Competing interests None declared.
Patient consent for publication Not required.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Data availability statement No data, other than that provided in the main manuscript and supplementray file, are available. None of the data is publicly available and was obtained for this project under data agreements as follows: enhanced surveillance data was obtained from Public Health England, Public Health Wales, Health Protection Scotland and Public Health Agency for Northern Ireland; outbreak surveillance data were provided by Public Health England; Office for National Statistics provided mortality data; hospital episode statistics (HES) were obtained from the Health and Social Care Information Centre. Mortality data recorded against the underlying cause of deaths is given at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/the21stcenturymortalityfilesdeathsdataset/current