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Diarrhoea - antibiotic associated - Background information
What is the prognosis?
- Most people with antibiotic-associated diarrhoea experience mild and self-limiting symptoms.
- However, a few people develop serious and sometimes fatal disease. This is usually due to infection with strains of Clostridium difficile that produce specific toxins (toxin A and toxin B).
- Although C. difficile infection is not common, it is one of the most common nosocomial causes of death from antibiotics.
- The mortality rate can be up to 25% in frail elderly people with C. difficile diarrhoea [Starr, 2005].
- The recurrence rate for C. difficile infection is high after the initial episode: around 20% for the first episode and 50–60% after the second episode [DH and HPA, 2008].
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