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Updated: May 13, 2026
A Protein Microarray Assay for Serological Determination of Antigen-specific Antibody Responses Following Clostridium difficile Infection
Published on: June 15, 2018
Evaluation of the fully automated BD MAX Cdiff and Xpert C. difficile assays for direct detection of Clostridium
Alexander H Dalpke1, Marjeta Hofko, Markus Zorn
1Department of Infectious Diseases, Medical Microbiology and Hygiene, University Hospital Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany. alexander.dalpke@med.uni-heidelberg.de
Abstract:
We evaluated the fully automated molecular BD MAX Cdiff assay (BD Diagnostics) and the Xpert C. difficile test (Cepheid) for rapid detection of Clostridium difficile infection. Culture was done on chromogenic agar followed by matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time of flight (MALDI-TOF) mass spectrometry identification and toxin detection. Repeat testing was required for 1.8% and 6.0% of the BD MAX and Xpert tests, respectively. Sensitivities, specificities, positive predictive values (PPV), and negative predictive values (NPV) were 90.5%, 97.9%, 89.3%, and 98.1%, respectively, for BD MAX and 97.3%, 97.9%, 90.0%, and 99.5%, respectively, for Xpert.
