Nontoxigenic Clostridium difficile: A Source for Hospital Infection?

Abstract

The source of Clostridium difficile disease (CDI) in hospitals has not been resolved. In studies using whole gene sequencing (WGS), only about one third of hospital-acquired cases were genetically linked to a previous symptomatic hospital case. Confounding this issue is confusion about defining CDI. In the U.S., nucleic acid amplification tests (NAATs) alone are generally used to identify CDI in patients with diarrhea. However, increasingly, NAAT positivity is understood to indicate only carriage of the organism. …