Clostridium difficile is an opportunistic pathogen inhabiting the human gut, often being the aetiological agent of infections after a microbiota dysbiosis following, for example, an antibiotic treatment. C. difficile infections (CDI) constitute a growing health problem with increasing rates of morbidity and mortality at groups of risk, such as elderly and hospitalized patients, but also in popu...

A method for detecting toxin production in Corynebacterium diphtheriae cultures by counterimmunoelectrophoresis is described. Precipitin lines were observed in toxigenic strains in 30 min.

introduction: clostridium difficile is the etiologic agent of several infections such as pseudomembranous colitis in human. these diseases are frequently associated with antibiotic useage but many infections with this organisms are seen without antibiotic administration. in addition it is believed that clostridium difficile is one of the most important bacteria involved in acquired hospital inf...

The Elek culture plate precipitin test is routinely used for the detection of exotoxin from toxigenic strains of Corynebacterium diphtheriae. Recently, the World Health Organization standardized this test to ensure accuracy, reliability, and reproducibility. In this study, we further modified the standard Elek test by using the antitoxin-in-membrane (AIM) and antitoxin-in-well (AIW) approaches....

Non-toxigenic clostridia, Clostridium butyricum but occasionally C. paraputrificum, were isolated from mainly extra-alimentary sites of 28 babies in maternity hospital over a period of 40 weeks. During that time, C. butyricum was isolated from the blood of two babies who died of necrotising enterocolitis and of two babies without referable symptoms. Otherwise these organisms appeared to be of n...

Most harmful diatoms belong to the marine, planktonic genus Pseudo-nitzschia and are responsible for amnesic shellfish poisoning through the production of domoic acid. Fifteen Pseudo-nitzschia species, nine of them toxigenic (approximately 60% of the species found in our samples) were recovered from 185 ship ballast tanks (water and sediment) destined for Canadian ports. Our results demonstrate...

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to develop and validate a multiplex real-time PCR assay for simultaneous identification and toxigenic type characterization of Clostridium difficile. METHODS The multiplex real-time PCR assay targeted and simultaneously detected triose phosphate isomerase (tpi) and binary toxin (cdtA) genes, and toxin A (tcdA) and B (tcdB) genes in the first and sec tubes,...

the aim of this study was to determine the occurrence of enterotoxigenic and enteroaggregative escherichia coli strains and antibiotic resistance of the isolates in raw milk and unpasteurized cheese. out of 200 samples of raw milk and 50 samples of unpasteurized cheeses, 96 and 24 strains of e. coli were isolated, respectively. polymerase chain reaction (pcr) was used to detect the genes encodi...

clostridium difficile is a frequently identified cause of nosocomial gastrointestinal disease. it has been proved to be a causative agent in antibiotic-associated diarrhea, antibiotic-associated colitis, and pseudomembraneous colitis. this study was aimed to determine the prevalence of c.difficile- associated diarrhea in hospitalized patients with nosocomial diarrhea. the 942 hospitalized patie...

Background. Inappropriate testing may result in false-positive diagnoses of Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) due to detection of asymptomatic carriers of toxigenic C. difficile. It has been proposed that carriers identified through inappropriate testing may contribute to transmission. However, the risk for transmission by carriers identified through inappropriate testing is unclear. Method...