COMBACTE-CDI’s Dr. Kerrie Davies: “We Will Be Extremely Busy at ECCMID 2020”

The case/control data has been analysed and has yielded some important results concerning the difference between community and hospital cases of C. difficile infection (CDI). In addition, the different diagnostic methodologies employed have enabled us to stratify the data to compare risks for and outcomes of CDI for patients who are toxin positive, compared with those who are positive for the organism only. These results are being submitted for presentation at the European Congress on Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Disease (ECCMID 2020).

In addition, the results of the work package two survey on current practices in surveillance, management, diagnosis and treatment of CDI have now been analysed. Again these are being submitted for presentation at ECCMID 2020, along with data on the cost of CDI in each of the study countries.

Dr Kerrie Davies, Scientific Lead of COMBACTE-CDI from the University of Leeds: “As we reach the end of the second year of COMBACTE-CDI we can reflect on the achievements of the consortium. Despite starting the project at a time of regulatory change in Europe, we have managed to recruit 119 sites from 12 countries to take part in the study. We coordinated the collection of 3163 diarrhoeal faecal samples and tested them using both gold standard and novel methodologies, thanks to the efforts of our EFPIA partners. We’ve highlighted the lack of clinical suspicion in the community for CDI, where 50% of cases identified by the study were never tested for CDI at the original submitting site. A huge effort by the entire team enabled us to get a 95% response rate to the case/control study, which is amazing, and those data have now yielded important results which we hope to discuss at ECCMID 2020. In fact, we have so many abstracts to submit to ECCMID this year from the project, that we are going to be extremely busy at the conference. The consortium has achieved so much in such a short space of time; a testament to the power of working within networks and making the most of each other’s strengths. Now we need to look ahead to our final year, and plan for the future, to ensure that the network has longevity and that we can continue to make a difference to the health of people in Europe”