| ■ Asymptomatic Patients Can Spread C. difficile | 2007.09.14 |
| People who have Clostridium difficile spores in the gastrointestinal tract but don't show any signs of illness -- such as diarrhea -- may help spread the common infection in hospitals and long-term care facilities, a U.S. study finds. Researchers evaluated 73 patients at the Louis Stokes Veteran Affairs Medical Center in Cleveland, Ohio. They discovered that the bacteria was nearly as likely to be found on the skin or around the bedside of asymptomatic patients with C. difficile as on patients sick with C. difficile diarrhea, the Canadian Press reported. The findings contradict previous studies that concluded that asymptomatic C. difficile carriers don't contribute to the spread of the bacteria in health care settings. The new study will be published in the Oct. 15 issue of the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases. "The patients we should worry the most about are the patients who are having diarrhea," said senior author Dr. Curtis Donskey, director of infection control at Louis Stokes, and a researcher at Case Western Reserve University. "But there are a lot of patients in hospitals and nursing homes who are carrying the organism. And even though they're not having diarrhea, they're often incontinent or very sick and often have kind of reduced standards of hygiene." |