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Introduction
Introduction
Clostridium difficile (also known as Clostridioides difficile) is a bacterium that causes life-threatening diarrhea typically resulting from the use of antibiotics. A C. difficile infection is usually nosocomial, and affects the colon of the digestive tract.
Visualizing C. difficile
Visualizing C. difficile
C. difficile is a gram positive bacteria, rod shaped bacteria
C. difficile was first visualized by Hall and O'Toole in 1935, and was taken from a healthy infant
Growing C. difficile
Growing C. difficile
The medium used to grow C. difficile is a Brain Heart Infusion Broth (BHI). Microbes are maintained on a 5% sheep's blood agar
C. difficile requires anaerobic environments to grow in (such as an anaerobic chamber). It will fail to grow with any oxygen present
Differentiating C. Difficile
Differentiating C. Difficile
Tests that can be done to identify C. difficile include...
Gram stain (which determines it is gram positive and bacillus)
Oxygen resilience (to prove that the organism is an obligate anaerobe)
Blood agar plate (the organism will experience growth on this medium)
ChromID C. difficile agar (only C. difficile will grow on this selective plate)
Phenol red (yellowish contents to show it is a glucose fermentor and no bubbles to show it is not a glucose oxidizer)
Molecular Diagnostics
Molecular Diagnostics
Primers will melt at 49.5 degrees Celsius
GC content 59%
Clostridium difficile 16s primer: 5’- GGCTGGATCACCTCCTT- 3’
Clostridium difficile 16s reverse: 5’- TAGTGCCAAGGCATCCGCCCT-3'
Background and treatments
Background and treatments
C. difficile is a pathogen that causes infection in the colon and causes colitis. It is one of the most spreadable diseases in hospitals, therefore protocol should be taken by health care professionals in order to prevent a C. difficile infection. Health care professionals should also be very weary when prescribing antibiotics, since some antibiotics suppress C. difficile resisting microbes.
Knowledge on C. difficile is very important because it is such a common infection in hospital settings. It is a spore forming bacteria that can enter the human body simply by someone coming in contact with something containing the organism. When someone has an untreated or poorly treated C. difficile infection, it can be fatal.
Bezlotoxumab is a vaccine that binds to Clostridium difficile toxin B and inactivates it.
References
References
Vuotto C, Donelli G, Buckley A, Chilton C. Clostridium difficile Biofilm. Adv Exp Med Biol. 2018;1050:97-115.
Heinlen and Ballard. 2010. Clostridium Difficile Infection. The American journal of the medical sciences. v340. i3. p247-252.
Donelli G, Vuotto C, Cardines R, Mastrantonio P. 2012. Biofilm-Growing Intestinal Anaerobic Bacteria. FEMS Immunology & Medical Microbiology. v65. i2. p318-325.
About the researcher
About the researcher
Samuel Funaro
Junior at University of Florida
Microbiology and Cell Science Major
Pre-dental
From Bradenton, Florida
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