Development and Validation of Dose-Response Relationship for Listeria monocytogenes

Abstract

Listeria monocytogenes is a foodborne pathogen internationally and in the U.S. The objective of this work was to develop and validate a dose-response model for infection by this organism. Only animal data was available in the literature. The beta-Poisson dose response model provided good ®t to the data, and one of the two data sets was found to be concordant with attack rates noted in human outbreaks. There are differences, however, between the dose-response relationship and endemic illness rates computed from``from``market basket'' surveys of the prevalence of L. monocytogenes. Further work to elucidate the bases for this difference is necessary.