A prospective cohort study on beachgoer self-reported gastrointestinal illness and recreation at a Costa Rican beach

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Key areas of increased GI illness risk include representation of dry season, a street vendor, a child playing in the sand, and similar risk between swimmers and nonswimmers. Beach with a couple walking along the sand. MERA team logo. This prospective cohort study assessed the relationship between recreational activities and gastrointestinal (GI) illness at a beach where ocean swimming in poor water quality conditions was the suspected primary exposure route, following US EPA NEEAR study methodologies. A 4.7% incidence of self-reported GI illness within 14 days after visiting was observed. Using logistic regression and backward selection, minimizing the model's Akaike Information Criterion, a statistically significant elevated GI illness risk among beachgoers with a health condition and for visits in the dry season was identified; food consumption and playing in the sand also explained increased GI illness. While ocean swimming exposure was not selected in the models, an increased incidence of GI illness was observed for ocean swimmers with underlying health conditions, and data suggested poor water quality conditions may contribute to increased risks. This study is the first of its kind in Central America. Since the GI illness rate was relatively low, it is possible that this study lacked a large enough sample size to fully understand which activities increased GI illness. Additional research on the disease burden from recreation on tropical beaches is needed.