SUDBURY,ON – A research project at Health Sciences North/Horizon Santé-Nord (HSN) is being featured in a major American medical journal.
The February 13th edition of the American Journal of Infection Control includes an article about a study on the early detection of C. difficile at HSN. That study was lead by a team at the Advanced Medical Research Institute of Canada (AMRIC), HSN’s research affiliate.
The AMRIC team compared the effectiveness of two laboratory tests (GeneXpert polymerase chain reaction, and enzyme immunoassay) used in the early detection of C. difficile. The tests were used on 1500 samples involving 978 patients at HSN between June of 2012 and March of 2013.
The results indicated the GeneXpert test was more effective in detecting both total cases of C.difficile and hospital-acquired cases of C. difficile.
“These findings have significant implications for front-line patient care,” says Dr. Francisco Diaz-Mitoma, AMRIC’s CEO and Scientific Director and lead researcher on the study. “The better and quicker we can detect C. difficile, the earlier and more thorough our measures can be to contain it. What we’ve learned from this study is having a direct impact on how we deal with infectious diseases like C.diff at Health Sciences North.”
The study is part of larger research project that is giving researchers and physicians a greater understanding into how C. difficile spreads, including which particular strains
are brought into hospital and which strains are spreading from patient to patient.
“We often think that patients ‘get’ C.difficile in hospital, but often they are bringing it in with them, because many of us are natural carriers of C.diff., ” continues Dr. Diaz-Mitoma. “Often the antibiotics we prescribe to patients in hospital may in fact kill other bacteria which then allows C. difficile to flourish. Containing C. difficile is about more than
just your cleaning and hand hygiene practices, it’s also about how we use antibiotics so we’re not solving one problem but creating another. By having a better understanding of C. difficile, detecting it earlier, and identifying and tracking individual strains, we can be
more proactive to prevent its spread and we’re doing that now. This research has profound, positive implications for patient care.”
Funding for the AMRIC team’s research on C. difficile was provided by the Northern Ontario Academic Medicine Association.
“Congratulations to the entire AMRIC team for this outstanding work,” says Dr. Denis Roy, HSN President and CEO. “It is research like this that fulfils a number of key priorities at HSN, including excellence in safe, evidence-based care, and global recognition for patient-centred innovation. This is a great example of how research directly impacts patient
care.”