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Comparison of control of Clostridium difficile infection in six English hospitals using whole-genome sequencing

Eyre, DW; Fawley, WN; Rajgopal, A; Settle, C; Mortimer, K; Goldberg, SD; Dawson, S; ... Walker, AS; + view all (2017) Comparison of control of Clostridium difficile infection in six English hospitals using whole-genome sequencing. Clinical Infectious Diseases , 65 (3) pp. 433-441. 10.1093/cid/cix338. Green open access

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Abstract

BACKGROUND: Variation in Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) rates between healthcare institutions suggests overall incidence could be reduced if the lowest rates could be achieved more widely. METHODS: We investigated whether whole-genome sequencing (WGS) of consecutive C. difficile isolates from six English hospitals over one year (2013-14) could be used to assess infection control performance. Fecal samples with a positive initial screen for C. difficile (GDH or toxin-PCR) were cultured and sequenced. Within each hospital, we estimated the proportion of cases plausibly acquired from previous cases, defined by an isolate ≤2 single nucleotide polymorphisms different from a previous isolate in the last 90-days. RESULTS: 851/971(87.6%) sequenced culture-positive samples were potentially-toxigenic (contained toxin genes), and 451(46.4%) were fecal-toxin-positive. 128/652(20%,95%CI 17-23%) potentially-toxigenic isolates >90-days after the study started were genetically-linked to a prior patient’s isolate from the previous 90-days. Hospital-2 had the fewest linked isolates, 7/105(7%,3-13%), hospital-1 an intermediate proportion, 9/70(13%,6-23%), while hospitals 3-6 had similar proportions of linked isolates (22-26%) (p≤0.002 comparing hospital-2 vs 3-6). Results were similar adjusting for locally-circulating ribotypes. Adjusting for hospital, ribotype-027 had the highest proportion of linked isolates (57%, 95%CI 29-81%). Fecal-toxin-positive and toxin-negative patients were similarly infectious in terms of being a potential transmission donor, OR=1.01(0.68-1.49,p=0.97). There was no association between the estimated proportion of cases linked to a previous case within 90-days and testing rates(p=0.60). CONCLUSIONS: WGS can be used as a novel surveillance tool to identify varying rates of C. difficile transmission between institutions and therefore to allow targeted efforts to reduce CDI incidence.

Type: Article
Title: Comparison of control of Clostridium difficile infection in six English hospitals using whole-genome sequencing
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1093/cid/cix338
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cid/cix338
Language: English
Additional information: Copyright © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press for the Infectious Diseases Society of America. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Keywords: Infection Control, Clostridium difficile, Whole-genome sequencing, Transmission, Surveillance
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Inst of Clinical Trials and Methodology
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Inst of Clinical Trials and Methodology > MRC Clinical Trials Unit at UCL
URI: https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1546193
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