Epidemiological model for Clostridium difficile transmission in healthcare settings

Abstract

Objective: Recent outbreaks of Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) have been difficult to control, and data indicate that the importance of different sources of transmission may have changed. Our objectives were to evaluate the contributions of asymptomatic and symptomatic C. difficile carriers to new colonizations and to determine the most important epidemiological factors influencing C. difficile transmission.

Design, setting, and patients: Retrospective cohort study of all patients admitted to medical wards at a large tertiary care hospital in the United States in the calendar year 2008.

Methods: Data from six medical wards and published literature were used to develop a compartmental model of C. difficile transmission. Patients could be in one of five transition states in the model: resistant to colonization (R), susceptible to colonization (S), asymptomatically colonized without protection against CDI (C(-)), asymptomatically colonized with protection against CDI (C(+)), and diseased (ie, with CDI; D).

Results: The contributions of C(-), C(+), and D patients to new colonizations were similar. The simulated basic reproduction number ranged from 0.55 to 1.99, with a median of 1.04. These values suggest that transmission within the ward alone from patients with CDI cannot sustain new C. difficile colonizations and therefore that the admission of colonized patients plays an important role in sustaining transmission in the ward. The epidemiological parameters that ranked as the most influential were the proportion of admitted C(-) patients and the transmission coefficient for asymptomatic carriers.

Conclusion: Our study underscores the need to further evaluate the role of asymptomatically colonized patients in C. difficile transmission in healthcare settings.

Figure 1

Flow diagram of the epidemiological model for Clostridium difficile transmission in a hospital ward. Five transition states are included: resistant (R), susceptible (S), asymptomatically colonized without protection against C. difficile infection (C⁻), asymptomatically colonized with protection against C. difficile infection (C⁺), and diseased patients (D).

Figure 2

Distribution of the basic reproduction number when parameters are varied (A) and contribution of the grouped parameters to the variation observed in the basic reproduction number (B). We grouped the parameters within the following groups: (1) parameters that determine patient susceptibility (a_s, α, θ, k_r), (2) transmission (β_c, β_d), (3) duration of stay of colonized individuals (k, k_d), (4) treatment (ε, p), and (5) virulence (f, φ). Parameters are defined in Table 2.

Figure 3

Number of new secondary cases (C⁻ and C⁺) of colonization generated by each type of admitted colonized patients (C⁻, C⁺, D).

Figure 4

Effect of varying the proportion of admitted colonized without immunity (a_cn) (A), colonized with immunity (a_cp) (B), and admitted diseased (a_d) (C) patients in the average Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) cases per 1000 admissions.

Figure 5

Effect of varying the transmission coefficients (beta c and beta d) (A), the clinical disease rate (phi) (B), and the fraction of colonized patients that mount immune response (C) on Clostridium difficile infection cases per 1000 admissions. The dash line represents the simulation with the baseline parameter values.