The highly contagious Clostridium difficil spreads more than three times as much within intensive care unit environments as previously recognized, according to a study published April 3 in JAMA Network Open.
Researchers from Salt Lake City-based University of Utah Health found that, while direct patient-to-patient transmission is rare, “there is a lot more movement of C. diff between surfaces, from surface-to-patient, and from patient-to-surface than previously found,” Lindsay Keegan, PhD, first author of the study, said in a news release.
To track C. diff, the researchers collected samples from nearly 200 patients and thousands of hospital room surfaces and clinicians’ hands. Researchers used whole genome DNA sequencing to track bacterial movement and distinguish between related and unrelated bacterial strains.
They detected the bacteria in 10% of patient ICU stays. Additionally, for more than half of potential transmission events, the two patients did not overlap in the hospitals — sometimes the difference was weeks long.
“There’s a lot going on under the hood that we’re just not seeing,” Michael Rubin, MD, PhD, senior author of the study, said in the release. “And if we ignore that, then we’re potentially putting patients at unnecessary risk. “Most of the C. diff strains observed in the study were non-disease-causing. However, the findings suggest similar undetected transmission of harmful strains could be occurring.”
