Clostridioides difficile is a gram-positive microorganism causing damage to the human intestinal wall, clinically manifesting as antibiotic-associated diarrhea and pseudomembranous colitis. C. infection remains serious problem; increasing frequency of nosocomial outbreaks emergence community-acquired forms heighten need for new prevention treatment methods. The pathogenesis associated with toxi...

The objectives of this study were to determine the incidence of infection by respiratory viruses in preterm infants submitted to mechanical ventilation, and to evaluate the clinical, laboratory and radiological patterns of viral infections among hospitalized infants in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) with any kind of acute respiratory failure. Seventy-eight preterm infants were studied ...

Clostridium difficile can cause large-scale outbreaks of diarrhea [1,2]. Significant progress has recently been achieved to improve treatment of symptomatic C. difficile disease [3]. But hospitals affected by C. difficile infection still face challenges in the effort to control endemic C. difficile infections, which may be related to overuse of antibiotics (e.g., fluoroquinolones, cephalosporin...

Legionella pneumophila has been found to be a common cause of community-acquired pneumonia in patients who required intensive care unit (ICU) admission. In many studies, the clinical manifestations for Legionnaires' disease were more severe and the mortality was higher when compared with pneumonias of other etiology. However, this may be due to delay in diagnosis and suboptimal antibiotic thera...

BACKGROUND Norovirus infection is the most common cause of acute self-limiting gastroenteritis. Only 3 cases of chronic norovirus infection in adult solid organ transplant recipients have been reported thus far. METHODS This case series describes 9 consecutive kidney allograft recipients with chronic norovirus infection with persistent virus shedding and intermittent diarrhea for a duration o...

Rotavirus is the major cause of severe dehydrating diarrhoea in young children worldwide. Considerable research has been carried out on rotavirus disease in India. This review collated data from 46 epidemiological studies to determine rotavirus positivity rates and genotypes of infecting rotavirus strains from various settings in India. Studies on diarrhoea presenting to hospitals, neonatal rot...

BACKGROUND Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) is the most common cause of health care-associated diarrhea in children and adults. Although serious complications of CDI have been reported to be increasing in adults, this trend has not yet been demonstrated in children. The purpose of this study was to examine the features of CDI in a pediatric population, with special attention to the occurre...

A fundamental goal of applied epidemiology is to determine whether a relationship between 2 factors is causal. For example, the primary purpose of an outbreak investigation is to identify what factor(s) “caused” the problem, and the purpose of the Study of the Efficacy of Nosocomial Infection Control (SENIC Project) was to measure the effect of infection control and prevention programs on rates...

BACKGROUND More than 800 hospitals and 586 intensive care units (ICUs) in Germany currently participate in a nationwide surveillance system for nosocomial infections (Krankenhaus-Infektions-Surveillance-System, KISS), which collects data on the frequency of nosocomial infections and pathogens and on the appearance of pathogens of special epidemiological importance. METHODS Data were collected...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Fluoroquinolones have not been frequently implicated as a cause of Clostridium difficile outbreaks. Nosocomial C. difficile infections increased from 2.7 to 6.8 cases per 1000 discharges (P < .001). During the first 2 years of the outbreak, there were 253 nosocomial C. difficile infections; of these, 26 resulted in colectomy and 18 resulted in death. We conducted an inv...