Analyzing GeoSentinel Surveillance Data: A Comparison of Methods to Explore Acute Gastrointestinal Illness Among International Travelers

GeoSentinel is a global surveillance network of travel medicine clinics that collect data from ill international travelers. Analyses have relied on proportionate morbidity calculations, but proportionate morbidity cannot estimate disease risk because healthy travelers are not included in the denomin...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Clinical infectious diseases 2014-02, Vol.58 (4), p.546-554
Main Authors: Mues, Katherine E., Esposito, Douglas H., Han, Pauline V., Jentes, Emily S., Sotir, Mark J., Brown, Clive
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Biological and medical sciences
Case control studies
Clinics
Design analysis
EMERGING INFECTIONS
Epidemiological Monitoring
Epidemiology
Female
Gastroenteritis - epidemiology
Gastrointestinal diseases
Geographic regions
Geography
Health surveillance
Humans
Infections
Infectious diseases
Male
Medical sciences
Middle Aged
Morbidity
Prevalence
Preventive medicine
Risk Assessment
Sentinel surveillance
Social networks
Surveillance
Travel
Travel medicine
Travel Medicine - methods
Travelers
Young Adult
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Summary:GeoSentinel is a global surveillance network of travel medicine clinics that collect data from ill international travelers. Analyses have relied on proportionate morbidity calculations, but proportionate morbidity cannot estimate disease risk because healthy travelers are not included in the denominator. The authors evaluated the use of a case-control design, controlling for GeoSentinel site and date of clinic visit, to calculate a reporting odds ratio (ROR). The association between region of travel and acute gastrointestinal illness was evaluated. All analyses found that the association with acute gastrointestinal illness was greatest among those who traveled to North Africa and South-Central Asia. There was consistency in the magnitude of the ROR and proportionate morbidity ratio (PMR) in regions such as the Caribbean. However, in other regions, the matched ROR was noticeably different than the PMR. The case-control ROR may be preferred for single-disease/syndrome analytical studies using GeoSentinel surveillance data or other surveillance data.
ISSN:1058-4838
1537-6591
DOI:10.1093/cid/cit746