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. 1982 Dec;16(6):1096–1101. doi: 10.1128/jcm.16.6.1096-1101.1982

Investigation of an outbreak of antibiotic-associated colitis by various typing methods.

J Wüst, N M Sullivan, U Hardegger, T D Wilkins
PMCID: PMC272546  PMID: 7161375

Abstract

During an outbreak of diarrheal disease due to Clostridium difficile in a surgical ward, 16 C. difficile isolates were cultured from fecal samples of 15 patients. Agarose gel electrophoresis for the detection of plasmid DNA, crossed immunoelectrophoresis for the detection of extracellular antigens and toxins, polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis for analyses of soluble proteins, assays for cytotoxicity, and a comparison of susceptibility to antimicrobial agents were employed. At least 12 of the 16 isolates were shown to be phenotypically the same strain. These findings suggest that in a hospital setting, diarrhea and pseudomembranous colitis caused by C. difficile can be of nosocomial origin and that they can spread from patient to patient.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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