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Previous Volume 330:1754-1755 June 16, 1994 Number 24 Next

	Since this article has no abstract, we have provided an extract of the first 100 words of the full text and any section headings.

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To the Editor: The review of Clostridium difficile colitis (Jan. 27 issue)¹ contains the misleading statement that "the laboratory diagnosis of C. difficile infection depends on the demonstration of C. difficile toxins in stool" by the stool-cytotoxin assay, which has a "high sensitivity (94 to 100 percent) and specificity (99 percent)." The studies cited to support this statement required a positive cytotoxin assay for their definition of a true positive case. Therefore, these studies cannot define the sensitivity of the cytotoxin test for the diagnosis of C. difficile-associated disease.

Mcfarland et al. found the cytotoxin assay to be neither completely . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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