Clostridium difficile guidelines updated

Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) is a severe or potentially fatal infection that occurs mainly in elderly and other vulnerable patient groups, especially those who have been exposed to antibiotic treatment. Although the NHS has worked hard to reduce the number of CDIs, the rate of improvement has slowed over recent years and it remains a leading cause of diarrhoea contracted within healthcare environments. Disease is due to strains of C. difficile that produce either toxin A or toxin B, so diagnosing the presence of these strains needs to be achieved quickly and accurately. 

The new ESCMID guidelines1 update those originally published in 2009 and include recommendations concerning the use of diagnostic technologies such as nucleic acid amplification tests (NAAT), which have been developed since the publication of the 2009 guidelines, but whose accuracy has never been studied in comparison with previously validated assays. 

The new guidelines are intended for use by medical microbiologists, gastroenterologists, infectious disease specialists and infection control practitioners. “Our aim is to not only improve diagnosis of CDI, but also to standardise the diagnostic process across Europe to allow for improved surveillance of the disease,” said Professor Ed Kuijper of the Leiden University Medical Center, whose research group, along with Professor Monique Crobach as first author, have published the guidelines.