2018 Volume 71 Issue 5 Pages 261-265
Clostridium difficile is responsible for pseudomembranous colitis and antibiotic-associated diarrhea. It is often isolated from patients and food-producing animals. Although transmission remains speculative, meat products could be a common source of C. difficile infection in humans and food-producing animals could also serve as a reservoir. To clarify its prevalence in cattle in Japan, we isolated C. difficile using fecal samples from 119 cows and 47 calves. Sixteen isolates were obtained from eight of the 47 calf fecal samples (17%), but specific strains were not isolated from the 119 cow fecal samples. The sixteen strains were sorted into 10 PCR ribotypes. All isolates were somewhat toxin-positive and 69% of isolates had three types of toxin genes (tcdA, tcdB, and cdtA/B ), which were involved in pathogenicity in humans. Therefore, our results demonstrated that toxigenic C. difficile was prevalent in Japan.
