Peer-reviewed veterinary case report
Accuracy of five toxin tests for diagnosing C. difficile diarrhea
By Chouicha, Nadira & Marks, Stanley L·Published in Journal of veterinary diagnostic investigation : official publication of the American Association of Veterinary Laboratory Diagnosticians, Inc·2006·University of California, United States·View original on PubMed →
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Original publication title: Evaluation of five enzyme immunoassays compared with the cytotoxicity assay for diagnosis of Clostridium difficile-associated diarrhea in dogs.
- Species:
- dog
Plain-English summary
A group of dogs with diarrhea was tested for a bacterial infection called Clostridium difficile, which can cause severe gastrointestinal issues. Researchers compared five different tests to see how well they could detect the bacteria in fecal samples from 100 dogs with diarrhea and 43 without. They found that while the tests had low accuracy when used on feces, two specific tests showed high accuracy when used on isolated samples of the bacteria. This means that the standard tests available for humans may not work well for diagnosing this infection in dogs, but certain specialized tests could be helpful.
People also search for: dog diarrhea causes · Clostridium difficile treatment in dogs · dog fecal test for bacteria
Abstract
Clostridium difficile-associated-diarrhea (CDAD) is a nosocomial infection in dogs. Diagnosis of this infection is dependent on clinical signs of disease supported by laboratory detection of C. difficile toxins A or B, or both, in fecal specimens via enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Unfortunately, to the authors' knowledge, commercially available ELISAs have not been validated in dogs to date. We evaluated 5 ELISAs done on 143 canine fecal specimens (100 diarrheic and 43 nondiarrheic dogs) and on 29 C. difficile isolates. The results of each ELISA were compared with the cytotoxin B tissue culture assay (CTA). Clostridium difficile was isolated from 23% of the fecal specimens. Eighteen of the 143 fecal specimens were toxin positive (15 diarrheic and 3 nondiarrheic dogs). On the basis of multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis for toxin-A and -B genes, 72% of the isolates were toxigenic. The carriage rate of toxigenic isolates in diarrheic dogs was higher than that in the nondiarrheic dogs; however, these differences were not statistically significant. A good correlation was found between CTA, PCR, and culture results. The ELISAs done on fecal specimens collected from diarrheic dogs had low sensitivity (7-33%). In contrast, ELISA for toxin A or B, or both, performed on toxigenic isolates had high sensitivity (93%). These results suggest that commercially available human ELISAs are inadequate for the diagnosis of canine C. difficile-associated diarrhea when tested on fecal specimens. In contrast, the Premier ToxinA/B and Techlab ToxinA/B ELISAs may be useful for the diagnosis of canine CDAD when used on toxigenic isolates.
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Search related cases →Original publication on PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16617699/