Clinical Significance of Toxigenic Clostridioides difficile Growth in Stool Cultures during the Era of Nonculture Methods for the Diagnosis of C. difficile Infection

Abstract

The importance of detecting toxins or toxin genes when diagnosing Clostridioides difficile infections (CDIs) or predicting the severity and outcomes of CDI has been emphasized in recent years. Although the yielding of C. difficile from stool cultures might implicate higher bacterial loads in fecal samples, in an era of nonculture methods for the standard diagnosis of CDIs, clinical significance of positive stool cultures of toxigenic C. difficile was analyzed in this study.