Home hygiene practices and infectious disease symptoms among household members

Public health programs are generally targeted to communitywide, population- based prevention strategies, with little attention focused on the home envi ronment as one potential source of transmission of infectious diseases. The purpose of this correlational prevalence survey was to describe the relati onship between home hygiene practices and prevalence of infectious disease: symptoms among household members. Three hundred and ninety-eight households with 1,662 members in an inner-city population (96.4% Hispanic) were surve yed to examine hygiene practices and determine the presence of transmission of infection, defined as the presence of the same symptom(s) in two or mor e household members for which at least one individual sought medical attent ion and received treatment. At least one individual in 78.6% of households reported symptoms of infection in the previous 30 days, and 37.9% of househ olds met the definition of disease transmission. In univariate analyses, fi ve factors were significantly associated with risk of household transmissio n, but in the logistic regression model, only use of communal laundry (p = 0.009) and lack of bleach use (p = 0.04) were significantly predictive of i ncreased risk of transmission. This is the first comprehensive survey of ho me hygiene practices and the first study to identify a potential link betwe en laundry and risk of disease transmission in homes. This potential link w arrants fur ther study in clinical trials.