COMBACTE-CDI: A Gigantic Step in Medical Science

Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI) remains a severe, or even fatal, infection with a large burden on the healthcare system worldwide. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control in Stockholm estimates that C. difficile is the 8^th most frequently detected microorganism in healthcare-associated infections (HAI), with a 3% attributable mortality and 3,700 deaths yearly as the direct consequence of healthcare-associated CDI in the EU/EEA. C. difficile is also the most common pathogen causing HAI’s in the United States. Isolated in 15% of all HAI’s the antibiotic resistance to CDI is becoming an urgent threat, according to the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.

The COMBACTE-CDI project, in its complexity and results, is a gigantic step in the development of medical science nowadays. The consortium is identifying and quantifying the direct and long-term burden of CDI on healthcare systems. An EU research platform has been created that will provide support for potential proof-of-concept studies to address unmet research aspects:

• new prevention and treatment strategies for CDI
• integrating data on hospital- and community based patients
• precise diagnostic approaches
• the prevalence of CDI by comparative diagnostics
• molecular epidemiology of C. difficile
• successful clonal lineages, including transmission modelling

The final objective is to develop a best-practice model for C. difficile infection prevention, diagnosis, treatment and surveillance. It will support the health care systems to be more successful in limiting the spread of CDIs. All these objectives do make COMBACTE-CDI a unique research project.