Dominance of toxigenic Clostridioides difficile strains and the appearance of the emerging PCR ribotype 955 in hospitals in Silesia, Poland
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Introduction Toxigenic strains of Clostridioides difficile are the leading cause of healthcare-associated bacterial infections in Poland. In the Silesian Voivodeship, with 4.5 million inhabitants, the incidence of C. difficile infection (CDI) in 2023 reached 65.1/100,000, slightly down from 70.0/100,000 in 2022. This study aimed to investigate the occurrence of toxigenic C. difficile ribotypes in hospitalized patients in Silesia. Materials and methods A total of 130 stool samples from patients with confirmed antibiotic-associated diarrhea were tested. Multiplex PCR detected genes for GDH, toxins A/B, binary toxin CDT, and 16S rDNA. Ribotyping was performed by capillary PCR, and antibiotic susceptibility was tested with ETEST for 10 antibiotics. Results Multiplex PCR confirmed the presence of all toxins (A+B+CDT+) in 97 isolates. Six strains (6%) represented ribotype 955 (RT955), first reported in Poland in 2023. RT027 remained dominant (60%, n = 78). All isolates were susceptible to vancomycin, while 4% (5/130) showed metronidazole resistance. Conclusion RT027 remains prevalent among CDI cases in Silesia. The emergence of RT955, closely related to a UK epidemic strain, suggests a possible shared origin and epidemiological link.
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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 | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 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".