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Hospital-acquired Clostridium difficile diarrhoea and herd immunity.
- Source :
-
Lancet (London, England) [Lancet] 1997 Feb 08; Vol. 349 (9049), pp. 426-8. - Publication Year :
- 1997
-
Abstract
- Clostridium difficile diarrhoea represents a significant health-service burden. We recently experienced an outbreak of C difficile diarrhoea associated with increased use of cefotaxime. The question we pose in this paper is how did the introduction and withdrawal of a single antibiotic so greatly affect rates of C difficile diarrhoea? Other antibiotics had nearly as high a risk of causing diarrhoea as cefotaxime, and the majority of patients never received cefotaxime. We believe that such outbreaks of C difficile diarrhoea are best understood in terms of a population model, and that taking antibiotics like cefotaxime should be thought of as a population rather than an individual risk factor. We postulate a herd-immunity model of C difficile diarrhoea, and examine the implications of this hypothesis.
- Subjects :
- Aged
Anti-Bacterial Agents administration & dosage
Anti-Bacterial Agents therapeutic use
Diarrhea immunology
Diarrhea microbiology
Diarrhea prevention & control
Enterocolitis, Pseudomembranous immunology
Enterocolitis, Pseudomembranous prevention & control
Humans
Infection Control methods
Models, Theoretical
Population
Clostridioides difficile
Diarrhea epidemiology
Disease Outbreaks
Enterocolitis, Pseudomembranous epidemiology
Immunity
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 0140-6736
- Volume :
- 349
- Issue :
- 9049
- Database :
- MEDLINE
- Journal :
- Lancet (London, England)
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 9033485
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(97)80053-0