• David P Durham, Margaret A Olsen, Erik R Dubberke, Alison P Galvani, and Jeffrey P Townsend.
• Emerging Infect. Dis. 2016 Apr 1; 22 (4): 608-16.

AbstractTo quantify the effect of hospital and community-based transmission and control measures on Clostridium difficile infection (CDI), we constructed a transmission model within and between hospital, community, and long-term care-facility settings. By parameterizing the model from national databases and calibrating it to C. difficile prevalence and CDI incidence, we found that hospitalized patients with CDI transmit C. difficile at a rate 15 (95% CI 7.2-32) times that of asymptomatic patients. Long-term care facility residents transmit at a rate of 27% (95% CI 13%-51%) that of hospitalized patients, and persons in the community at a rate of 0.1% (95% CI 0.062%-0.2%) that of hospitalized patients. Despite lower transmission rates for asymptomatic carriers and community sources, these transmission routes have a substantial effect on hospital-onset CDI because of the larger reservoir of hospitalized carriers and persons in the community. Asymptomatic carriers and community sources should be accounted for when designing and evaluating control interventions.

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