Udo Buchholz

..Evaluation of inspection data bases in individual local health departments and translation of those findings into inspection guidelines could lead to an increased efficiency and perhaps cost-effectiveness of local inspection programs...

..In May 2003 the Soest County Health Department was informed of an unusually large number of patients hospitalized with atypical pneumonia...

..A large outbreak of the hemolytic-uremic syndrome caused by Shiga-toxin-producing Escherichia coli O104:H4 occurred in Germany in May 2011. The source of infection was undetermined...

..On January 5, 1999, the California Department of Health Services was notified of the repeated occurrence (December 21, 1998, and January 2, 1999) of gastrointestinal tract illness among patrons at a Thai restaurant in central California...

..The consumption of sprouts was identified as the most likely vehicle of infection...

..We conducted a prospective household study to investigate viral shedding in seasonal and pandemic influenza between 2007 and 2011 in Berlin and Munich, Germany...

..We aimed to compare the risk of influenza infection in healthcare workers in acute hospital care with that in non-healthcare workers over the same season...

..However, the first wave with measurable burden of disease started only in October 2009. The basic epidemiological and clinical characteristics of the pandemic were analysed in order to understand the course of the pandemic in Germany...

..This may have led to a different risk factor profile and a delay of the time threshold necessary for transmission among household members with close contact...

..We aimed to investigate efficacy, acceptability, and tolerability of NPI in households with influenza index patients...

..In June 2009, an outbreak of pandemic A(H1N1) 2009 infection occurred at a teenager's party in Germany. The objective of this study was to identify risk factors for pandemic A(H1N1) 2009 infection...

..The goal of this review is to provide a thorough overview of pandemic vaccine prioritization concepts in the 27 European Union (EU) member states and the four non-EU countries of the Global Health Security Action Group...

..Compared with other nasopharyngeal specimen types, nasal wash was the most sensitive. These results support the notion that epidemiologic and virologic characteristics of NIV are in many aspects similar to those of seasonal influenza...

..We modelled the effect of control strategies to reduce the spread with the goal to defer the epidemic wave in a country where it is detected in a very early stage...

..This is, to our knowledge, the first multistate outbreak associated with a non-O157 STEC detected by laboratory-based surveillance. Molecular subtyping was pivotal, as disease occurrence was sporadic or family-related...

..We present statistics based on billing data of the German associations of statutory health insurance physicians regarding vaccination coverage for influenza in the three seasons from 2004/05 to 2006/07...

..Consequently, the general preventive strategy would be jeopardised, namely to understand the (often new) mechanisms by which contamination and disease transmission occur well enough to interrupt them...

..After more than one year of its existence, we investigated the success of the implementation of the new surveillance system with the aim to identify possibilities for further improvement...

..35). These data suggest that the more frequent carriage of both virulence genes, i.e. stx2 and eae, forms the basis of why STEC O157 predominates in patients with HUS...

..The aim of this investigation is to identify possibilities for the improvement of the German surveillance system based on the experiences made during the SARS epidemic 2003...

..In order to stop the possible spread of the virus and to study the epidemiological and clinical characteristics of the infection, an investigation was launched by the local health authorities and the RKI...

..The aim of this study was to investigate the use of recommended protective measures and to measure H5N1-seroprevalence among personnel tasked with bird collection...

..During August 2006, a protracted outbreak of Salmonella (S.) Enteritidis infections in a large Hamburg nursing home was investigated...

..In the future it may be necessary to address nurses differently than physicians. We conclude that a national campaign with very limited resources is feasible and capable of achieving measurable results in a short time frame...

..PCR should be used for primary detection of influenza viruses...

..Vaccine effectiveness was within the range predicted by the literature. Vaccination led to a lower attack rate in the highly vaccinated CCC and appeared to protect from severe disease...

..S. patients from 1997 and report new epidemiologic and etiologic aspects. Although Haff disease is traditionally an epidemic foodborne illness, these six cases occurred in two clusters and as one sporadic case...

..Our results show that in Europe antimicrobial resistance of S. pneumoniae to penicillin is correlated with use of beta-lactam antibiotics and macrolides...