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Clostridium difficile–associated disease (CDAD) is the most common cause of infectious antibiotic-associated diarrhea in the U.S. Diagnosis is usually based on a positive enzyme immunoassay (EIA), but this test can have low sensitivity and specificity. Now, researchers have evaluated a new method for detecting C. difficile in the stool: a real-time PCR assay that uses primers targeting a region of the toxin B gene. These primers detect toxin A–negative, toxin B–positive, and toxin A and B–positive strains.
In the first phase of the study, the researchers compared an EIA (Wampole’s C. difficile tox A/B II) with PCR using 618 loose-stool samples that were sent to the laboratory for CDAD testing. Compared with anaerobic culture (the “gold stand…