%0 Journal Article
%T Linkages between animal and human health sentinel data
%A Matthew Scotch
%A Lynda Odofin
%A Peter Rabinowitz
%J BMC Veterinary Research
%D 2009
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1746-6148-5-15
%X The Canary Database, an online bibliographic database of animal-sentinel studies was searched and articles were classified according to four linkage categories.465 studies were identified and assigned to linkage categories involving: descriptive, analytic, molecular, or no human outcomes of human and animal health. Descriptive linkage was the most common, whereby both animal and human health outcomes were presented, but without quantitative linkage between the two. Rarely, analytic linkage was utilized in which animal data was used to quantitatively predict human risk. The other two categories included molecular linkage, and no human outcomes, which present health outcomes in animals but not humans.We found limited use of animal data to quantitatively predict human risk and listed the methods from the literature that performed analytic linkage. The lack of analytic linkage in the literature might not be solely related to technological barriers including access to electronic database, statistical software packages, and Geographical Information System (GIS). Rather, the problem might be from a lack of understanding by researchers of the importance of animal data as a 'sentinel' for human health. Researchers performing zoonotic surveillance should be aware of the value of animal-sentinel approaches for predicting human risk and consider analytic methods for linking animal and human data. Qualitative work needs to be done in order to examine researchers' decisions in linkage strategies between animal and human data.In recent years, there has been increasing awareness on the part of both human and animal health professionals that disease events in animal populations may have direct relevance to human health. As with the analogy of the "canary in the coal mine", animals may serve as sentinels of human health threats in the environment, and work by Halliday and others [1] have focused on establishing a framework to facilitate surveillance efforts. Examples of sentinels inc
%U http://www.biomedcentral.com/1746-6148/5/15