Human–livestock contacts and their relationship to transmission of zoonotic pathogens, a systematic review of literature

Klous, Gijs; Huss, Anke; Heederik, Dick J.J.; Coutinho, Roel A.

That living animals were the main risk factor for carriage or infections with micro-organisms was also shown by Myers et al.: they reported that farmers showed the highest Swine Influenza H1N1 specific titres in their blood, compared to a pool of veterinarians, control subjects and slaughterhouse workers [49] . Overview of the selected publications. The columns depict; first author, year of publication, country where the study was performed, study category, occupational exposure (YES/NO, YES versus NO) with N: number of people exposed, micro-organism studied, livestock involved if (YES): animals are screened for a micro-organism, description of the people involved, main study conclusion, reference number. There are three study categories; seroepidemiology reports on studies where blood samples were analysed for specific disease markers, risk analyses reports on specific risk factors for acquiring a micro-organism and source attribution, studies where the source of specific micro-organism is identified after human cases or carriage of the specified micro-organism. For occupational exposure (YES or NO) the number of either occupational exposed, non-occupational exposed or occupational versus non-occupational exposed people are given. The column with the description of people includes occupations and when available also descriptions of control groups.