Clostridioides difficile in the environment, food, animals and humans in southern Italy: Occurrence and genetic relatedness

The majority of the strains were toxigenic (34.1% showed the toxigenic profile A+B+CDT+ and 38.9% the profile A+B+CDT−). MLVA allowed to identify 4 clonal complexes of genetically related isolates: complex n. 1 grouped together human, environmental and food strains, whereas complex n. 3 included human and environmental isolates. The use of MLVA gave further evidence to the possible role of environment, animals and food as routes of transmission of C. difficile infections to human.