A retrospective cohort study of Clostridium difficile infection (CDI), the most common health care–associated infection, found that multiply recurrent CDI (mrCDI) is increasing in incidence, disproportionately to the overall increase in CDI.
Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, worked with a database of more than 38 million individuals with private health insurance between January 2001 and December 2012.
Cases of CDI and mrCDI in the study population were determined through ICD-9 diagnosis codes, and prescriptions for treatment. To meet the definition of mrCDI, there had to be at least three courses of treatment lasting at least 14 days each.
In the study population, 45,341 persons developed CDI, of whom 1,669 had mrCDI. The median age was 46 years, and 58.9% were female. Between 2001 and 2012, CDI incidence increased by 42.7% (P = .004), while mrCDI incidence increased by 188.8% (P less than .001).
With increases in CDI and mrCDI incidence, and with the effectiveness of standard antibiotic treatment decreasing with each recurrence, “demand for new antimicrobial therapies and FMT [fecal microbiota transplantation] can be expected to increase considerably in the coming years,” wrote Gene K. Ma, MD, and his coauthors.
As for FMT, the researchers noted that its likely greater demand in the future (as suggested by their study results) highlights the importance of establishing the long-term safety of the procedure (Ann Intern Med. 2017 Jul. doi: 10.7326/M16-2733).