Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Oncol. Oct 10, 2017; 8(5): 398-404
Published online Oct 10, 2017. doi: 10.5306/wjco.v8.i5.398
Characteristics of Clostridium difficile infection in patients hospitalized with myelodysplastic syndrome or acute myelogenous leukemia
Kamini Shah, Bryan F Curtin, Christopher Chu, Daniel Hwang, Mark H Flasar, Erik von Rosenvinge
Kamini Shah, Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21201, United States
Bryan F Curtin, Digestive Diseases Branch, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, Bethesda, MD 21201, United States
Christopher Chu, Department of Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21201, United States
Daniel Hwang, Department of Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore 21201, MD, United States
Mark H Flasar, Erik von Rosenvinge, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Department of Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine and VA Maryland Health Care System, Baltimore, MD 21201, United States
Author contributions: Shah K and Curtin BF collected data and wrote the manuscript; Chu C and Hwang D collected data; Flasar MH analyzed and interpreted the data; von Rosenvinge E supervised the study; all authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: This study was reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board of the University of Maryland, Baltimore (IRB# HP-00058296).
Conflict-of-interest statement: No potential conflicts of interest relevant to this article were reported.
Data sharing statement: Data set is available from the corresponding author at evonrose@medicine.umaryland.edu.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Erik von Rosenvinge, MD, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Department of Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine and VA Maryland Health Care System, Baltimore, MD 21201, United States. evonrose@medicine.umaryland.edu
Telephone: +1-410-6057000 Fax: +1-410-3288315
Received: March 11, 2017
Peer-review started: March 23, 2017
First decision: May 5, 2017
Revised: July 6, 2017
Accepted: July 14, 2017
Article in press: July 17, 2017
Published online: October 10, 2017
Core Tip

Core tip: This study evaluates factors associated with the development and outcomes of Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) in patients with Myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) or acute myelogenous leukemia (AML). Our findings demonstrate a high incidence of CDI with 15.2% of patients diagnosed with CDI during the 28-mo study period. Risk factors associated with the development of CDI include low albumin, prior history of CDI, chemotherapy within 30 d of hospitalization, cytarabine-based chemotherapy within 30 d of hospitalization, and increased duration of neutropenia and hospitalization.