Proton pump inhibitors' use correlates with an increase in rate and severity of hospital-acquired Clostridium difficile infection, a Pharmacotherapy study finds.
Researchers examined 41,663 patients with C. Diff who were hospitalized between January 2013 and May 2014. Researchers excluded patients who had C. Diff on hospital admission. Of the remaining patients, 17,302 received at least one dose of a PPI and 24,092 did not receive any PPI.
Sixty-five of the 17,302 patients in the PPI group later developed C. Diff in the hospital, as compared with only 14 of the 24,092 patients in the control group. In the PPI group, 0.21 percent of patients met the definition of severe C. Diff compared with 0.03 percent of control group patients. When only evaluating patients who developed severe-complicated C. Diff, there were 22 cases in the PPI group and two cases in the control group.