Abstract
[Introduction] Clinical manifestations of infectious enterocolitis vary depending on the
causative microorganism, providing clues in the search for the cause. However, studies on the
simple clinical differentiation between bacterial enterocolitis (BE) and viral enterocolitis (VE)
are scarce. we performed a post hoc analysis to examine the clinical differentiation between BE
and VE.
[Methods] We performed a post hoc analysis using a previously performed study on
hospitalized patients with infectious diarrhea. BE was defined as cases in which a specific
causative organism was definitely detected from stool culture, and VE was defined as cases with a
positive rapid stool antigen testing for virus. We compared the clinical characteristics of BE and
VE.
[Results] The data of 44 BE patients and 26 VE patients showed that the BE patients were
younger and had a higher prevalence of fever, longer onset-visit interval, and higher serum CRP
level. Unexpectedly, hematochezia was prevalent in VE. Higher serum CRP level for BE (odds
ratio：1.30) and older age for VE (odds ratio：0.96) were significant in the logistic regression
analysis.
[Conclusions] Our study suggests that serum CRP is useful for diagnosing BE in adults and that
VE cases with hematochezia may include cases with “viral diarrhea-induced ischemic colitis”.
