Strategies for recognizing acute chemical-associated foodborne illness

Abstract

The U.S. food supply is vulnerable to contamination with chemicals and toxins. Public health officials and clinicians may misdiagnose patients with acute chemical-associated foodborne illness (CAFI) due to unfamiliarity with chemical illness, increased familiarity with infectious foodborne illness, nonspecific presentation of most foodborne chemical poisoning, lack of readily available analytic methodologies to detect chemicals, and lack of education on how to develop a differential diagnosis for CAFI. This article will review the unique features of CAFI in the acute setting, address important questions to help differentiate CAFI from other foodborne illness, discuss laboratory features of CAFI, and provide health officials and clinicians with a clinical symptom-based approach to assist with proper identification and differentiation of acute CAFI.