1. Advances in the diagnosis and treatment of Clostridium difficile infections
- Author
-
Lifen Ling, Christopher R. Polage, Zhong Peng, Charles W. Stratton, Yi-Wei Tang, Bin Wu, and Chunhui Li
- Subjects
Diarrhea ,0301 basic medicine ,medicine.medical_specialty ,genetic structures ,Epidemiology ,medicine.drug_class ,030106 microbiology ,Immunology ,Antibiotics ,Surotomycin ,Review Article ,Microbiology ,03 medical and health sciences ,chemistry.chemical_compound ,Virology ,Drug Discovery ,Animals ,Humans ,Medicine ,Intensive care medicine ,Clostridioides difficile ,business.industry ,General Medicine ,Gold standard (test) ,Clostridium difficile ,Anti-Bacterial Agents ,Clinical trial ,Infectious Diseases ,Bezlotoxumab ,chemistry ,Clostridium Infections ,Parasitology ,medicine.symptom ,business ,Cadazolid - Abstract
Clostridium difficile is a leading cause of antibiotic-associated diarrhea worldwide. The diagnosis of C. difficile infection (CDI) requires both clinical manifestations and a positive laboratory test for C. difficile and/or its toxins. While antibiotic therapy is the treatment of choice for CDI, there are relatively few classes of effective antibiotics currently available. Therefore, the development of novel antibiotics and/or alternative treatment strategies for CDI has received a great deal of attention in recent years. A number of emerging agents such as cadazolid, surotomycin, ridinilazole, and bezlotoxumab have demonstrated activity against C. difficile; some of these have been approved for limited clinical use and some are in clinical trials. In addition, other approaches such as early and accurate diagnosis of CDI as well as disease prevention are important for clinical management. While the toxigenic culture and the cell cytotoxicity neutralization assay are still recognized as the gold standard for the diagnosis of CDI, new diagnostic approaches such as nucleic acid amplification methods have become available. In this review, we will discuss both current and emerging diagnostic and therapeutic modalities for CDI.
- Published
- 2018