How the U.S. Tracks Botulism: Consultation, Antitoxin and National Surveillance

CDC collects, analyzes and shares national data on bacterial foodborne illnesses, including botulism. Several surveillance systems track botulism cases and outbreaks, and clinical consultation on suspected cases feeds them too.

Image from CDC's page

Who clinicians call

A few public health agencies give doctors expert consultation on suspected botulism and release antitoxin when it's needed:

These agencies are the only sources of antitoxin in the United States, so every consultation also records a suspected case — and all or almost all recognized cases are counted. Some cases are still missed: they may be misdiagnosed, or mildly ill people may never seek care.

Four kinds of botulism

For surveillance, CDC sorts human cases by how they were acquired (case definitions):

• Foodborne
• Wound
• Infant
• Other — adult intestinal colonization, iatrogenic botulism, and unknown routes

Two streams of case data

NBSS annual summaries: 2021 · 2020 · 2019 · 2018 · 2017. Earlier years are on CDC Stacks.

Outbreaks

The National Outbreak Reporting System (NORS) collects information on botulism outbreaks. To find Clostridium botulinum outbreaks reported to CDC:

1. Open the NORS Dashboard.
2. Set your search, choosing "Clostridium" as the etiology.
3. At the bottom of the page, choose "Download current search data."
4. Sort or filter the "Genus Species" column to keep only Clostridium botulinum.

Sources

Based on "National Botulism Surveillance," Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; a work of the United States government in the public domain.