C. diff, formally known as clostridium difficile, is a strain of bacteria that is resistant to antibiotics and is becoming more and more common in hospitals around the world. Older people that are on antibiotic treatments have been noted to be of particular risk. Researchers have demonstrated how the bacterium spreads by taking a close look at its genetic code.
They found that the common hospital infection becomes more severe against those it attacks when the strain becomes resistant. The authors published their findings in the Nature Genetics journal. According to the US Centre for Disease Control, C. diff is a large problem in the US as well and is linked to about 14,000 deaths on an annual basis.
While C. diff has been a problem for decades at hospitals, in the last few years there has been a higher level of concern after notable outbreaks occurred in the UK, US, Canada, and other parts of Europe.
Scientists discovered that the genetic code of C. diff can rapidly mutate, and by taking a closer look at the bacteria’s genetic code they can figure out how related different outbreaks of the strains really are. By taking a large scale look at 151 different samples from 19 separate countries researchers are able to get a wider picture of how antibiotic resistant bacteria strains spread.
They found that there was a FQR1 strain that started in the United States and then after spreading across the US slowly made its way to South Korea and Switzerland. Another FQR2 strain was born in Canada and then spread into other regions of North America and over into Australia and many countries in Europe.
