About this trial
Clostridioides difficile (C. difficile) is the most common healthcare-associated pathogen, causing \>500,000 infections and \>29,000 deaths per year in the US. Traditional approaches to reduce hospital-onset CDI focus on identifying, isolating, and treating symptomatic patients to prevent transmission to other patients. Recent genomic epidemiology studies, however, suggest that most hospital-onset CDI cases are attributable to asymptomatic carriers who either progress from colonization to active infection themselves or transmit C. difficile to other patients while asymptomatic. This trial will evaluate an intervention to pre-emptively identify asymptomatic C. difficile carriers and then implement a patient-tailored prevention package to protect the carrier from progression to active infection and to prevent transmission from the carrier to other patients.
Eligibility criteria
Qualifiers
Patients admitted to ICU or Oncology units and identified to carry C. Difficile via VRE swab
Disqualifiers
Patients not identified as carriers of C. difficile and patients not admitted to ICU or oncology units
Trial design
Treatments tested in this trial
- Arm 1: Routine care
- Arm 2: Preemptive C. difficile infection prevention bundle
Treatment groups
Sponsors and collaborators
Brigham and Women's Hospital
Lead sponsor
Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute
Collaborator
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Collaborator
Massachusetts Host-Microbiome Center
Collaborator
Hatch Family Foundation
Collaborator