Fusarium and Acanthamoeba keratitis: can a single centre detect outbreaks?
- W Sansanayudh1,
- V Cevallos1,
- T C Porco1,2,
- T P Margolis1,3,
- T M Lietman1,2,3,4,
- N R Acharya1,3
- 1University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
- 2Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
- 3Department of Ophthalmology, University of California, San Francisco, 8 Koret Way, San Francisco, CA, USA
- 4Institute for Global Health, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
- N R Acharya, 513 Parnassus Ave, Room S334, San Francisco, CA 94143-0412, USA; nisha.acharya{at}ucsf.edu
- Accepted 16 December 2007
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recently reported nationwide epidemics of Fusarium and Acanthamoeba keratitis.1 2 These investigations were prompted by reports of increased cases at individual sites.3–5 It can be difficult to detect outbreaks at a single centre due to changing diagnostic criteria, changing referral patterns, and the effects of chance. The objective of the current study was to determine if the recent outbreaks of Fusarium or Acanthamoeba keratitis could be identified from data obtained from a single centre, the F I Proctor Foundation at the University of California, San Francisco. Using the Maximum Excess Events Test (MEET), which detects clustering within years and between years, we confirmed epidemics consistent with the recently reported epidemics of Fusarium and Acanthamoeba keratitis. Our study shows that it is possible …
