title: [Maximum likelihood estimation of date of infection in an outbreak of diarrhea due to contaminated foods assuming lognormal distribution for the incubation period].
abstract: This paper proposes a new method for estimating the date of infection in an outbreak of diarrhea caused by eating foods contaminated by some sort of foodborne pathogens such as Escherichia coli O-157:H7. Simple methods for calculating maximum likelihood estimator and confidence interval are proposed assuming (1) a common date of infection and (2) the incubation period has a log-normal distribution. Further, this paper shows that all three methods proposed so far for estimating the date of infection under the same assumptions are theoretically inappropriate or computationally imprecise. The proposed methods are illustrated with data from three outbreaks of Escherichia coli O-157:H7 and outbreak due to Escherichia coli O-118:H2 in Japan.
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Tango
mesh_terms: D004196:Disease Outbreaks; D004927:Escherichia coli Infections; D019453:Escherichia coli O157; D005517:Foodborne Diseases; D006801:Humans; D016013:Likelihood Functions; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D013997:Time Factors