Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) causes gut infections and can be particularly dangerous for elderly patients. Because it is resistant to commonly used antibiotics it can emerge in patients who are already being treated in hospital for unrelated conditions.
The new research used DNA fingerprinting to examine which particular types of the bacteria were causing infections in patients and how widely they are distributed in Europe.
Some strains were found clustered within a particular country, suggesting they were possibly being passed around within hospitals -- a well-recognised route of transmission. However, because some other strains were found dispersed in several different countries, this adds weight to the idea that C. difficile could also be transmitted via our food.
For those who may not be familiar, Wikipedia helpfully summarizes that Clostridium difficile infection (CDI):
[...] is a symptomatic infection due to the spore-forming bacterium, Clostridium difficile. Symptoms include watery diarrhea, fever, nausea, and abdominal pain. It makes up about 20% of cases of antibiotic-associated diarrhea. Complications may include pseudomembranous colitis, toxic megacolon, perforation of the colon, and sepsis
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @06:07PM (6 children)
Every major hospital should be built in duplicate; for a period of 10 years, one of the hospitals is sealed off, and cleansed from top to bottom with the most toxic chemicals possible, and then left to sit undisturbed under penalty of life in prison.
After 10 years, a transition is made: New patients are admitted to the fresh hospital, and forbidden from entering the used hospital. The roles of these hospitals reverses: The used hospital is sealed and cleansed, and waits for the next cycle.
Europeans need to start cleaning their goddamn chicken eggs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @06:11PM
See subject line.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @06:25PM
"My house is dirty; buy me a clean one."
Krusty the Klown is on SN?
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday April 25 2017, @06:54PM (3 children)
I remember when the antibacterial soap-fad started to go into full-swing, before its side-effects were known. Of course, I was smart enough even back then to avoid the shit.
And look what happened -- necrotizing fasciitis, aka flesh-eating bacteria. Turns out the shit was killing off all of the beneficial bacteria which was keeping the really bad stuff in check.
Now assholes are bathing themselves in hand-sanitizer. Everybody keeps a bottle at their desk and some workplaces even have dispensers on their walls. You know the decline of Western civilization is at hand when everybody starts behaving like Howard Hughes.
Actually, we've progressed to the next phase -- Calhoun's mouse experiments -- in which mass-insanity rules the streets and overpopulation* is causing humanity's killer-instincts to kick in at the personal, as opposed to the tribal, level.
* Or the perception of it, fueled by the always-on connectivity of the internet and more urban traffic jams
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @06:58PM (2 children)
Tell us more about your childhood as a poor nigger boy when you swam in raw sewage and you felt clean because you were clean.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday April 25 2017, @07:13PM (1 child)
When I was of single-digit age, we were allowed to play in the mud like pigs, including at an excavation site for construction purposes. Our parents were in support of this, well, except afterward when they had to wash the rocks out of our hair.
A few years later we played in a creek that had those red sewage-worms in it, catching guppies and making crawdads fight battles to the death. Only a few months after that, the creek was shut-down for extreme pollution.
Nowadays kids aren't even allowed to leave the house, even to play in the backyard. This is not the culture of a warrior...not the culture of a Kllingon!
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 26 2017, @06:17PM
The drainage culverts I played in weren't shut down for pollution, but basically most natural waterways collect surface runoff and concentrate it - you know: bird poo, cat poo, dog poo, etc.
Thing was, in the 1970s, most people didn't spring money for fancy glycophosphate chemicals in their suburban yards, nor heavy fertilizers, insecticides, etc. Today, we're not just swimming in prozac that passes the water treatment plants unchanged, we're breathing the dust of a thousand artificial chemical compounds created and used for virtually everything except improving human health through inhalation.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday April 25 2017, @07:58PM (2 children)
Complications may include pseudomembranous colitis, toxic megacolon, perforation of the colon, and sepsis
There would be a goatse joke in here if the topic were not so serious.
"toxic megacolon" does sound like a bunch of English Lit majors needed a heavy metal band name.
I seem to recall in the 90s long before google and search engines playing a game of "band name or technical phrase" on IRC. The good old days. I got a few people to believe "thermionic emission" was something related to STDs, what doctors write when you say it burns when you pee.
I also find it impossible to read those kind of lists without sounding like the fine print at the end of prescription medicine TV commercials. "Ask your doctor about using prescription WTFium to cure your shitposting disorder, (switch to 5 times faster speaker) side effects include toxic megacolon, thermal emission, and death, talk to your doctor and stop taking prescription WTFium if you experience any of those symptoms".
(Score: 2) by ledow on Wednesday April 26 2017, @07:17AM
No,
"Toxic megacolon" sounds more like an article title covering a dissertation on over-use of the colon in the English language.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @12:45PM
For some visual shocking examples of "mega" this or that in medicine, search images of Chagas disease.