Experimental Clostridium difficile Enterocolitis in Foals
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Despite empirical clinical association of infection with Clostridium difficile with colitis in horses, a causal link has not been confirmed. The objective of this study was to develop a model of C difficile–associated diarrhea in foals with normal transfer of passive immunity. Nine 1-day-old pony foals were inoculated intragastrically with spores or vegetative cells of C difficile. Five foals were challenged with spores, with 2 receiving 105 colony-forming units (CFUs) and concurrently 3 receiving 107 CFUs once daily for 3 days. Clindamycin was administered orally to disrupt gastrointestinal flora. A further 4 foals were challenged by orogastric administration of 1010 CFUs of vegetative cells once daily for 3 days or until diarrhea developed. This group did not receive clindamycin. Spore and vegetative cell preparations were negative for toxins of C difficile and common enteropathogens. Clinical signs varied from mild abdominal discomfort and pasty feces to colic and watery diarrhea in 8 of 9 foals. Four of 5 foals challenged with spores developed mild diarrhea, whereas all foals challenged with vegetative cells developed moderate to severe diarrhea. C difficile was isolated from feces of all foals between 24 and 72 hours after inoculation and toxins A or B or both were detected in the feces of all foals by an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. We concluded that spores and vegetative cells of C difficile are capable of colonizing the gastrointestinal tract, producing toxins, and inducing clinical signs similar to those encountered in naturally occurring cases. This study fulfilled Koch's postulates for C difficile–associated diarrhea in foals and provides a model for consistent reproduction of the disease for future studies.
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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 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
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".