Prevalence and molecular types of Clostridium difficile isolates from fecal specimens of patients in a tertiary care center.

Prevalence and molecular types of Clostridium difficile isolates from fecal specimens of patients in a tertiary care center. J Med Microbiol. 2015 Sep 10; Authors: Vaishnavi C, Singh M, Mahmood S, Kochhar R Abstract Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) leads to considerable morbidity and mortality among hospitalized patients. Fecal specimens from 1110 hospitalized patients suspected for CDI were cultured for isolation of C. difficile and characterization of virulence genes. PCR was carried out for toxigenic genes tcdA, tcdB, cdtA and cdtB genes and PCR-RFLP for fliC and slpA genes. Of 174 (15.7%) C. difficile isolates, 121 (69.5%) were toxigenic amongst which 68 (56.2%) also had both tcdA and tcdB genes. The remaining 53 (43.8%) of the isolates also had at least one of the toxin genes. Binary toxin genes (cdtA and cdtB) with only one of the two components were present in 16 (9.2%) of the 174 isolates. The other virulent genes - fliC and slpA - were present in 100% of the isolates. The most frequent PCR-RFLP type of fliC gene was type I (n=101) followed by type VII (n=49) and type III (n=24). The slpA gene presented with three combinations of patterns. Characterization of virulence genes in C. difficile isolates is of extreme importance for epidemiological purposes due to its capacity to adapt to new environmental circumstances leading to the emergence of new epidemic strains. PMID: 26361995 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher...
Source: Journal of Medical Microbiology - Category: Microbiology Authors: Tags: J Med Microbiol Source Type: research