Related Experiment Video
Updated: Oct 13, 2025
Cefoperazone-treated Mouse Model of Clinically-relevant Clostridium difficile Strain R20291
Published on: December 10, 2016
Clostridoides difficile Infection Severity Assessment by Fecal Calprotectin: A Pilot Study
Mirela Nicoleta Voicu1, Ana Maria Ahmet2, Adina Turcu-Stiolica3
1Phd Student, Department of Pharmacology, University of Medicine and Pharmacy of Craiova, Romania.
Abstract:
Clostridoides difficile infection (CDI) is the leading cause of antibiotic related diarrhea therapy and may associate high morbidity and mortality. Providing a potential biomarker to assess disease severity may help physicians in choosing the right treatment.
Methods:
This was a prospective, single-centre cohort study which included patients diagnosed with CDI which were assessed by fecal calprotectin (FC).
Results:
Patients included had a mean of 69.29 years of age, 54.23% of male gender. Patients diagnosed with mild CDI had a mean ATLAS score of 3.39 (±1.24), statistically lower (p<0.001) than patients with severe CDI who had a mean ATLAS score of 7.33 (±0.77). Fecal calprotectin concentrations were significantly higher (p<0.001) in the severe CDI patients (615.14μg/g; IQR, 403.62-784.4μg/g) than in the mild CDI patients (195.42μg/g; IQR, 131.12-298.59μg/g). We suggest a cut-off of 290.09μg/g for the predictive marker of fecal calprotectin, which permitted to identify patients with severe and mild CDI, having 100% sensitivity and 76% specificity.
Conclusions:
Our findings point out the potential that FC might have, as a biomarker for disease severity. However, future multicentre studies and in larger cohort need to validate the results.
