Researchers discovered that men with a history of C. difficile — one of the most common hospital-acquired infections — had lower rates of prostate cancer.
The study, published Jan. 30 in Cureus, evaluated incidents of prostate cancer between January 2010 and December 2019 in patients with and without a history of C. difficile infection. A total of 79,226 patients were identified and separated into infected and control groups and subsequently matched by antibiotic treatment.
In the C. difficile group, 1.62 percent developed prostate cancer, while 3.95 percent developed prostate cancer in the control group.