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Previous Volume 353:2503-2505 December 8, 2005 Number 23 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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Recent experience with influenza, the severe acute respiratory syndrome (also known as SARS), avian influenza, and community-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus has demonstrated how old pathogens can emerge with increased virulence and challenge scientists to explain their rebirth, clinicians to care for patients, and infection-control personnel to prevent their spread. Clostridium difficile appears to illustrate these challenges. It already has some distinctive features: it causes disease almost exclusively in the presence of exposure to antibiotics, it is the only anaerobe that poses a nosocomial risk, and it produces toxin in vivo only in the colon.

About 3 percent of healthy adults . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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From the Department of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore.

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