Clostridium difficile in Children: Colonization and Consequences

The incidence of Clostridium difficile in-fection (CDI) has dramatically increased in the past decade. In some parts of the United States, CDI now surpasses methi-cillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus as the most common healthcare-associated infection [1]. CDI also appears to be causing increasingly severe illnesses and more deaths, and exerting a growing burden on healthcare systems [2–6]. The preponderance of literature on this prob-lem has been derived from adult clinical and epidemiologic studies. Clostridium difficile was first described in the stools of neonates in 1935, an