Clostridioides difficile infection in patients with hematological malignancy: A multicenter study in Taiwan

Background: Among the individuals with hematological malignancy (HM) complicated with Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI), the variables associated with in-hospital mortality and recurrence of CDI were investigated. Material and methods: Including adults with HM and those without malignancy suffering from CDI from January 2015 to December 2016 in three hospitals in Taiwan. Results: Totally 314 patients including 77 with HM and 237 patients without malignancy were included. HM patients more often had low leukocyte counts (<500 cells/mL: 28.6% vs. 2.1%) than those without malignancy and more patients without malignancy had severe CDI than patients with HM (31.6% vs. 14.3%, P = .003), according to the severity score of IDSA/SHEA. Patients with HM had a higher recurrence rate of CDI (14.3%, 11/77 vs. 7.2%, 17/237; P = .07) and longer hospital stay (47.2 +/- 40.8 days vs. 33.3 +/- 37.3 days; P = .006) than those without malignancy. In the multivariate analyses for those with HM and CDI, the in-hospital mortality was associated with vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE) colonization or infection (odds ratio [OR] 7.72; P = .01), and C. difficile ribotype 078 complex infection (OR 9.22; P = .03). Moreover underlying hematological malignancy (OR 2.74; P = .04) and VRE colonization/infection (OR 2.71; P = .02) were independently associated with CDI recurrence. Conclusion: Patients with HM complicated with CDI were often regarded as non-severe infection, but had a similar in-hospital mortality rate as those without malignancy. CDI due to ribotype 078 complex isolates heralded a poor prognosis among HM patients. Copyright (c) 2021, Taiwan Society of Microbiology. Published by Elsevier Taiwan LLC. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).