Laboratory-based surveillance of Clostridium difficile circulating in Australia, September - November 2010.

Clostridium difficile rose in prominence in the early 2000s with large-scale outbreaks of a particular binary toxin-positive strain, ribotype 027, in North America and Europe. In Australia outbreaks of the same scale had not and have not been seen. A survey of C.

Comparison of ChromID C. difficile agar and cycloserine-cefoxitin-fructose agar for the recovery of Clostridium difficile.

Aim: The rapidly changing epidemiology of Clostridium difficile infection highlights the need for improved and continuing surveillance involving stool culturing to enable molecular tracking. Culture of C. difficile can be difficult and time consuming.

Isolation of Clostridium difficile from faecal specimens--a comparison of chromID C. difficile agar and cycloserine-cefoxitin-fructose agar.

The culture of toxigenic Clostridium difficile from stool specimens is still seen as the gold standard for the laboratory diagnosis of C. difficile infection (CDI). bioMérieux have released ChromID Cdiff chromogenic agar (CDIF) for the isolation and identification of C.

Cross-sectional study reveals high prevalence of Clostridium difficile non-PCR ribotype 078 strains in Australian veal calves at slaughter.

Recent reports in North America and Europe of Clostridium difficile being isolated from livestock and retail meats of bovine origin have raised concerns about the risk to public health. To assess the situation in Australia, we investigated the prevalence and genetic diversity of C. difficile in adult cattle and calves at slaughter.

Clostridium difficile in horses in Australia--a preliminary study.

During a 24 month period from 2007 to 2009, 174 faecal specimens from horses in Australia (predominantly from Western Australia) were tested for Clostridium difficile. C. difficile was isolated from 14 (23 %) of 62 diarrhoeal animals (including 10 foals) and from none of 112 healthy adult horses.

New types of toxin A-negative, toxin B-positive strains among clinical isolates of Clostridium difficile in Australia.

A total of 817 human clinical isolates of Clostridium difficile from all Australian states were screened for A(-)B(+) strains by toxin gene PCR assays. Nine (1.1 %) strains were confirmed to be A(-)B(+) by enzyme immunoassay for toxin production.