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Updated: Feb 18, 2026
A Protocol to Characterize the Morphological Changes of Clostridium difficile in Response to Antibiotic Treatment
Published on: May 25, 2017
Characterization of Clostridium difficile Strains Isolated from Patients with C. difficile-associated Disease in
Seung-Hak Cho1, Jung-Whan Chon2, Kun-Ho Seo2
1Division of Bacterial Disease Research, Center for Infectious Disease Research, Korea National Institute of Health, Cheongju, Korea.
Objectives:
Studies on Clostridium difficile are rare in Korea. We investigated the epidemiological characteristics of C. difficile isolates from patients with C. difficile-associated disease (CDAD) in Korea.
Methods:
Multiplex polymerase chain reaction was performed to detect the presence of tcdA and tcdB toxin genes. Antimicrobial susceptibility test was carried out by the disk-dilution method. C. difficile strains were subtyped by automated repetitive-element palindromic PCR (rep-PCR).
Results:
Among patients with CDAD, 73 (25.8%), 32 (11.3%), 32 (11.3%), and 26 (9.2%) suffered from pneumonia, cancer or neoplasm, diabetes, and colitis, respectively. Of all stool samples, 43 samples (15.2%) were positive for C. difficile strains. We observed two expression patterns of toxin genes: tcdA+/tcdB+ (86% isolates) and tcdA-/tcdB+ (14% isolates), with all isolates expressing tcdB. Furthermore, some isolates were resistant to clindamycin (65%), ampicillin (56%), and cefazolin (40%), but all were susceptible to vancomycin and metronidazole. The tested samples were classified into diverse clusters using automated rep-PCR.
Conclusion:
Our findings revealed the characteristics and antibiotic resistance of C. difficile isolates from patients in Korea. The epidemiological data may provide valuable insight into development of treatment strategies for C. difficile infections in Korea.
