Fig. 1

Intestinal microbiota dynamics in patients with C. difficile colonization or infection. The figure shows changes in intestinal microbiota composition (area charts or bar charts for patients with a single measurement), Shannon diversity (dash-dotted line), bacterial DNA content (dotted line), and human DNA content (solid line) during hospitalization for patients who developed C. difficile colonization (a–d) or infection (e–h). Only those microbial taxa with a relative abundance of ≥10 % in at least one sample are depicted. The y-axis on the left shows the relative abundance of microbial taxa or human DNA proportions, while the y-axis on the right shows the Shannon diversity index or bacterial DNA content (expressed as number of 16S rRNA genes per Mb). The x-axis shows the number of days after hospital admission (day 0). The figures only display information for the period from hospital admission until the last stool collection. The bars underneath the graphs indicate hospital exposures: Azithro azithromycin, Ceph cephalosporin, Chemo chemotherapeutic agent, Metro metronidazole, NSAID nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug, Penicillin combination penicillin with β-lactamase inhibitor, PPI proton pump inhibitor, Steroid, glucocorticoid, Vanco IV intravenous vancomycin, Vanco PO oral vancomycin. The day on which a patient had a positive C. difficile culture (Culture+), the presence of C. difficile infection symptoms, but a negative C. difficile enzyme immunoassay (CDI symptoms) or a diagnosis of C. difficile infection (CDI diagnosis) is also indicated