Fecal specimens for Clostridium difficile Diagnostic Testing are Stable for up to 72 hours at 4°C
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Clostridium difficile testing for stool specimens transported from remote geographic locations is a challenge due to long transit times that are often at room temperature.The impact of storage at room temperature versus 4 ° C on Clostridium difficile diagnostic tests during transport of stool samples has not been well studied Methods: This study assessed the impact of storage at room temperature versus 4°C for up to 72 hours on the stability of glutamate dehydrogenase antigen, Toxin A and B antigens, toxigenic culture and cytopathic effect testing.Twelve diagnostic stool samples that were tested on the day of collection and shown to be C. difficile toxin positive were used for this study.Sample aliquots of each stool were stored at room temperature and 4 ° C and testing was repeated at 24, 48 and 72 hours.Results: The glutamate dehyrdogenase antigen and toxigenic stool culture tests were shown to be 100% reproducible at room temperature and 4 ° C for up to 72 hours.Toxin A and B antigen deteriorated to 70% by 72 hours at room temperature but was 90% reproducible if held at 4 ° C. The cytopathic effect assay was 90% reproducible by 72 hours at room temperature and 4 ° C. Conclusions:Based on our data we recommend that for laboratories receiving stool samples from remote regions where transit may be prolonged that glutamate dehydrogenase antigen screening followed by nucleic acid amplification testing may be a feasible diagnostic algorithm.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".