ABSTRACT
PURPOSE: To evaluate the frequency of respiratory viruses in a nonselected population of intensive care unit patients and employees and to investigate the clinical as well as the epidemiological association with virological findings. METHODS: Between 12 January and 5 March 2009, nasopharyngeal swabs were collected from 55 intensive care unit (ICU) patients and 41 medical personnel at 16 different time-points and tested for 11 respiratory viruses by single real-time PCR using TaqMan or MGB probes. RESULTS: Among the 55 ICU patients tested, there were 30 virus-positive respiratory specimens (30/173, 17.3%) and 23 patients who tested positive at least once for respiratory viruses (23/55, 41.8%). Only the time from admission to the ICU was associated with the probability of testing positive, with the probability of testing positive decreasing with increasing length of stay (P < 0.001). Of the 418 respiratory specimens collected from the healthcare personnel, 27 (6.5%) tested positive. Seventeen employees tested positive at least once for respiratory viruses (17/41, 41.5%). Among the employees, calendar time (P = 0.03) and having sick contacts at home (P = 0.006) were significantly associated with swab positivity. Among the study population, patients had a significantly higher probability of having a positive swab result than employees. The distribution of viruses differed between the two groups. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that when hygiene precautions are adopted, the possibility of transmitting selected respiratory viruses between patients and personnel is limited. They also point to a greater importance of the community over the hospital environment for acquisition of viral respiratory infections by ICU patients and employees.
Subject(s)
Health Personnel , Intensive Care Units , Nasopharynx/virology , Viruses/isolation & purification , Adult , Aged , Female , Humans , Infectious Disease Transmission, Patient-to-Professional/prevention & control , Male , Middle Aged , Real-Time Polymerase Chain ReactionABSTRACT
Today we manage food safety through good practices at different levels of food production, distribution, and consumption. The paper analyses current good practices, parameters involved in the food safety circle along the food supply chain, and consumer dilemmas. As a result of the current situation the new approach called "Good Nutritional Practice" (GNP) is proposed to balance the food safety systems. It is shown how important it is to integrate actual the food safety solutions within GNP, which includes consumers, and is based on a model that covers subsystems from other relevant good practices (nine good practices along the food supply chain). It has been shown that present maintenance of food safety in the food supply chain can be easily broken down, because of the different kinds of barriers or a simple misunderstanding among stakeholders including consumers.
Subject(s)
Consumer Product Safety , Food Contamination/prevention & control , Food Handling/standards , Food Preservation/standards , Food-Processing Industry/standards , Food Microbiology , Health Education , Humans , Hygiene , Public Health , Transportation/standardsABSTRACT
In this paper, the contamination of poultry tissues by trace elements in Slovenia is examined from a public health standpoint. During systematic veterinary and sanitary monitoring of foodstuffs of animal origin from 1997 to 1999, 21 poultry meat samples, 70 poultry liver tissue samples, and 184 poultry kidney tissue samples were examined for Pb, Cd, and Hg contents. The levels of poultry tissue contamination in six regions of Slovenia were determined. All samples met Slovenian standards except one poultry kidney tissue sample, which exceeded the Hg level allowed. The difference between chicken and turkey contamination levels was statistically significant (P < 0.05) only for Cd content in kidney tissues. Poultry kidney tissue Cd contents differed for different geographical regions (P < 0.05).
