Laboratory diagnosis of Clostridioides (Clostridium) difficile infection in domestic animals: A short review.

The research article presents a review of laboratory diagnostic methods for Clostridioides (Clostridium) difficile infection (CDI) in domestic animals such as pigs, horses, and dogs, and evaluates their performance and sensitivity.

Introduction and Aim

• The study aims to explore and review the diagnostic methods for Clostridioides (Clostridium) difficile infection (CDI) in animals to identify the best practices.
• The researchers observed that despite the known importance of CDI in animals, there are no published guidelines for diagnosing the illness.
• In addition, the effectiveness of commercial methods used so far, which were standardized for human stool samples, can vary according to the animal species.

Review of Diagnostic Methods and Performance

• The findings indicate that the detection of Toxins A and B using enzyme immunoassays has a low performance in piglet and dog samples, but shows high sensitivity for the diagnosis of CDI in foals.
• Tests for the detection of glutamate dehydrogenase (GDH) demonstrated high sensitivity towards detection of C. difficile in animal samples, which suggests that it could be an adequate screening method.
• There have been limited studies evaluating real-time PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) or nucleic acid amplification tests in animal samples. The ones conducted so far have a low performance for the detection of C. difficile in animals.

Importance of Histopathology

• The study also highlights that although the intestinal lesions caused by CDI can vary among animal species, histopathology – the microscopic examination of biological tissues to observe the appearance of diseased cells and tissues in very fine detail – could be a useful auxiliary tool for postmortem diagnosis in animals.