Public Health Surveillance for Foodborne Infections: Design of Epidemiological Studies and Applying Seroepidemiology to Validate the Surveillance Pyramid

<ul>
<li>To establish antibody decay profiles of immunoglobulin (Ig) A, IgG and IgM for persons with a stool culture-confirmed infection with S. Enteritidis (SE) or S. Typhimurium (ST) using a mixed salmonella ELISA (decay profiles for antibodies against campylobacter (CA) have already been established)</li>
<li>To measure antibodies against SE/ST and CA in ~5000 population-representative serum samples from several European countries</li>
<li>To estimate the incidence of SE/ST and CA infections in the population by using a mathematical back-calculation model</li>
<li>To calculate "multipliers" (i.e. the ratio between the number of infections in the population divided by the number of notified cases), which allow to 'calibrate' the surveillance systems of different countries</li>
<li>To develop a standard protocol for the application of the method beyond the scope of WP32</li>
<li>To make recommendations for additional studies, eg. to explore the protective effect of antibodies to foodborne pathogens and what implications this has for case-control studies of risk factors for foodborne pathogens and to compare the incidence of exposures leading to an antibody response in humans with quantitative risk assessment approaches</li>
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