Incubation period of

Background

The incubation period for

Objective

To estimate the incubation period for patients developing CDI after initial negative cultures.

Methods

In 3 tertiary care medical centers, we conducted a cohort study to identify hospitalized patients and long-term care facility residents with negative initial cultures for

Results

Of 4,179 patients with negative enrollment cultures and no prior CDI diagnosis within 56 days, 107 (2.6%) were diagnosed as having CDI, including 19 (17.8%) with and 88 (82.2%) without prior detection of carriage. When the data were censored to only include participants with negative cultures collected within 14 days, the estimated median incubation period was 6 days with 25% and 75% of estimated incubation periods occurring within 3 and 12 days, respectively. The observed estimated incubation period did not differ significantly for patients classified as probable, possible, or unlikely CDI.

Conclusion

Our findings are consistent with the previous studies that suggested the incubation period for CDI is typically less than 1 week and is less than 2 weeks in most cases.

Informations de copyright

© Cambridge University Press 2024.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

C. J. D. has received research funding from Clorox, PDI, and Pfizer. The other authors report no conflicts of interest relevant to this article.