The Power of Case Reports

O'Toole and Hall first isolated C-diff in 1935. They found it could infect and cause colitis in guinea pigs. No one really picked up the thread until 43 years later when a paper came out of the VA in Los Angeles reporting on a patient who had pseudo membranous colitis after taking antibiotic Clendomycin. The authors found that the patient's stool contained C-diff and the C-diff toxin. And they theorized that this might be a primary cause of antibiotic associated diarrhea in general.