| Summary: | In recent years, the incidence and severity of <i>Clostridium difficile</i> infections has increased. Additionally, resistance of <i>C. difficile</i> to frequently used antibiotics is rising. To improve our understanding of <i>C. difficile</i>, there is a need for molecular characterization of different strains and antibiotic resistance testing. We investigated the efficacy of GenoType CDiff kit (Hain Lifesciences) in identification of <i>C. difficile</i> and its various strains in northern Israel. The kit involves a molecular assay that detects <i>C. difficile</i> from stool samples or colonies and identifies the different strains and mutations in the <i>gyrA</i> gene that cause moxifloxacin resistance. Forty-nine <i>C. difficile</i> positive samples were examined by the kit following DNA extraction from both colonies and stool. The identification rate (95.9%) of <i>C. difficile</i> was much higher when DNA was extracted from colonies, compared to extraction from stool (46.9%). Low frequencies of ribotype027 strain (2%) and of ribotype078 strain (4%) were found. There was a high concordance between genotype (mutation in <i>gyrA</i>) and phenotype (Etest) for moxifloxacin resistance (Kappa = 0.72). A high percentage of moxifloxacin-resistant strains was found. Our findings indicate that the GenoType CDiff kit is very effective in characterization of <i>C.</i> <i>difficile</i> strains and less effective for identification of <i>C. difficile</i> directly from stool samples.
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