Bacterial infection caused by health care settings

A new British study raises questions about the transmission of Clostridium difficile, a bacterium that causes life-threatening diarrhea in people who have recently been on antibiotics. Physicians have assumed that C. difficile mainly spreads from patient to patient in hospital settings. This study is published in the New England Journal of Medicine and reported that the bacteria spread from person to person in the hospital. “Unexpectedly few cases – 13% - appear to be acquired from direct ward-based contact with other symptomatic cases”, said study co-author David Eyre, a research microbiologist at Oxford University's experimental medicine division. “These have previously been thought to be the main source of infections and the focus of prevention efforts”. “This study clearly shows we're missing a lot of potential transmissions, a lot of potential sources of C. difficile, but we still don't know where the C. diff. is coming from”, said Dr. Curtis Donskey, an associate professor of medicine at Case Western Reserve University and a staff physician in the infectious diseases section at Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center.