Saturday, December 30, 2006

Top 10 issues in hospital medicine for 2006---issue 4: the new Clostridium difficile strain

Clostridium difficile continued to emerge as an important hospital pathogen in 2006 and was the subject of a number of important review articles. I linked to them here, here and here.

What’s different about the new strain? It has a mutation which causes it to produce markedly increased quantities of toxin. This has resulted in an increase in treatment failure, relapse and mortality. The latest review on this hospital scourge was published in the November 21 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine.

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