Clostridium difficile can cause large-scale outbreaks of diarrhea [1,2]. Significant progress has recently been achieved to improve treatment of symptomatic C. difficile disease [3]. But hospitals affected by C. difficile infection still face challenges in the effort to control endemic C. difficile infections, which may be related to overuse of antibiotics (e.g., fluoroquinolones, cephalosporin...

Purpose Clostridium difficile colonization and infection are commonly associated with poor outcomes in patients with pediatric inflammatory bowel disease (PIBD). We aimed to investigate the prevalence of C. difficile colonization and infection at the time of diagnosis and to evaluate risk factors associated with the development of C. difficile infection during the course of PIBD treatment. Me...

The aim of this meta-analysis was to compare the efficacy of metronidazole and vancomycin for the treatment of Clostridium difficile infection, especially to investigate which agent was superior for treating either mild or severe C. difficile infection. A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials and cohort studies identified in Pubmed, Embase, and the Cochrane Library was conducted. Four r...

Objective: To determine if there are identifiable risk factors for the development of Clostridium difficileassociated diarrhea in surgical patients after treatment of polymicrobial infections. Design: Record review of an 11-year dataset of consecutive infections treated in surgical patients in a single hospital. Data were prospectively collected on adult surgery and trauma surgery patients. Par...

The Bristol stool form scale classifies the relative density of stool samples. In a prospective cohort study, we investigated the associations between stool density, C. difficile assay positivity, hospital-onset C. difficile infection, complications, and severity of C. difficile. We describe associations between the Bristol score, assay positivity, and clinical C. difficile infection.

Clostridium difficile infections are an emerging health problem in the modern hospital environment. Severe alterations of the gut microbiome with loss of resistance to colonization against C. difficile are thought to be the major trigger, but there is no clear concept of how C. difficile infection evolves and which microbiological factors are involved. We sequenced 16S rRNA amplicons generated ...

UNLABELLED Clostridium difficile infection is one of the most common health care-associated infections, and up to 40% of patients suffer from recurrence of disease following standard antibiotic therapy. Recently, fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) has been successfully used to treat recurrent C. difficile infection. It is hypothesized that FMT aids in recovery of a microbiota capable of col...

BACKGROUND The effect of hospital-acquired infection with Clostridium difficile on length of stay in hospital is not yet fully understood. We determined the independent impact of hospital-acquired infection with C. difficile on length of stay in hospital. METHODS We conducted a retrospective observational cohort study of admissions to hospital between July 1, 2002, and Mar. 31, 2009, at a sin...

To the Editor: In their randomized study comparing fidaxomicin with vancomycin for Clostridium difficile infection, Louie et al. (Feb. 3 issue)1 found that substantially fewer patients in the fidaxomicin group had recurrences of C. difficile infection within 4 weeks after the conclusion of treatment. We recently reported on an observational study involving U.S. veterans in which the recurrence ...

Clostridium difficile is a gram-positive, spore-forming, obligate anaerobic bacillus that was originally isolated from the stool of a healthy neonate in 1935. In high-income countries, C. difficile is the most common cause of infectious diarrhoea in hospitalized patients. The incidence of C. difficile infection in the USA has increased markedly since 2000, with hospitalizations for C. difficile...