Researchers Suspect Food as Potentially Important Source for C. difficile Transmission

At this year’s European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID), Dr. Eyre from the University of Oxford (UK) presented new evidence on how Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) infections spread among humans. Researchers sampled stool from 482 European hospitals—collected on particular days in the summer and winter of 2012/2013—for the presence of the ten most common types of C. difficile using DNA fingerprinting technology.

While this study is not conclusive about the mode of transmission for C. difficile infections, the study identified the same types of C. difficile across multiple countries—an observation, GlobalData notes, that is only conceivable if spreading of the disease occurs outside a local hospital setting, for example through common food sources.

Researchers of this study found that half of the examined strains were spread across all hospital settings, while certain types of C. difficile were observed only in specific countries, such as Austria, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain and the UK.

Interestingly, the spread of C. difficile infections in these countries has been associated with pig farming in the past. While this only one of many possible explanations for the spread of this particular strain of C. difficile, GlobalData notes that if food is a possible source of transmission, then prevention strategies, such as Pfizer’s investigational vaccine PF-06425090, hold the greatest promise of containing the spread of C. difficile infections.