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If I told you there's a new kind of medicine that could heal you, but it was made from germs, would you take it? If you’re open to the idea – or maybe because it sounds gross – then hang with me and let’s start here. We see germs as a threat, and we've gotten really good at killing the ones that cause infections with things like hand sanitizers and antibiotics. In fact, since 1950 the rate of infectious diseases, like measles, mumps and TB has plummeted. But during that same time, chronic diseases, including asthma, diabetes and Crohn’s disease...

Hold your nose and don't spit out your coffee: Doctors have found a way to put healthy people's poop into pills that can cure serious gut infections — a less yucky way to do "fecal transplants." Canadian researchers tried this on 27 patients and cured them all after strong antibiotics failed to help. It's a gross topic but a serious problem. Half a million Americans get Clostridium difficile, or C-diff, infections each year, and about 14,000 die. The germ causes nausea, cramping and diarrhea so bad it is often disabling. A very potent and pricey antibiotic can kill C-diff but...

VAIL, COLO. – The strategy of a short course of probiotics prescribed to prevent development of Clostridium difficile–associated diarrhea in patients on antibiotic therapy for any of myriad indications is attracting serious attention in both pediatrics and adult medicine. Interest in this low-cost and demonstrably low-risk preventive strategy has been driven by a recent favorable meta-analysis by the Cochrane Collaboration. Dr. Samuel Dominguez The Cochrane analysis included all 23 randomized controlled trials of probiotics for the prevention of C. difficile–associated diarrhea in adults or children taking antibiotics. The trials, three of which were conducted in children, included 4,213 subjects, none...

Certain types of antidepressants may put people at an increased risk for developing a deadly superbug infection, a new study suggested. Researchers from the University of Michigan revealed that individuals who suffer from depression and those taking antidepressants such as mirtazapine and fluoxetine had a much higher chance of contracting Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) – a life threatening infection that can cause severe diarrhea and inflammation of the colon. One of the most common infections acquired by patients at hospitals, C. difficile has been occurring with more and more frequency, resulting in the deaths of 14,000 individuals in the United...

A total of 17 people have been infected with Clostridium difficile at a hospital in Moray. NHS ...revealed on Wednesday that two elderly people with the C.diff infection had died. Two wards have been closed to new admissions but health officials said the patients were giving no cause for concern. The health board said the deaths happened in April and that both the patients had been frail.

Unclean and uncaring nurses in the U.K. are blamed may have spread superbugs that led the deaths of the patients they were charged with caring for. The nurses are accused of not washing their hands and of leaving patients lying in soiled beds. They were cited in an official report blaming mismanagement for the deaths of 90 people who contracted a bacterial infection in hospitals in southern England. The report into the spread of the highly contagious bacterium said nurses at three hospitals run by the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS trust were often too busy to wash their hands...

Recent experience with influenza, the severe acute respiratory syndrome (also known as SARS), avian influenza, and community-acquired methicillin- resistant Staphylococcus aureus has demonstrated how old pathogens can emerge with increased virulence and challenge scientists to explain their rebirth, clinicians to care for patients, and infection- control personnel to prevent their spread. Clostridium difficile appears to illustrate these challenges. It already has some distinctive features: it causes disease almost exclusively in the presence of exposure to antibiotics, it is the only anaerobe that poses a nosocomial risk, and it produces toxin in vivo only in the colon. About 3 percent of...

Associated Press ATLANTA -- A deadly bacterial illness commonly seen in people on antibiotics appears to be growing more common — even in patients not taking such drugs, federal health officials warned today. The bacteria are Clostridium difficile, also known as C-diff. The germ is becoming a regular menace in hospitals and nursing homes, and last year it was blamed for 100 deaths over 18 months at a hospital in Quebec, Canada. Recent cases in four states show it is appearing more often in healthy people who have not been admitted to health-care facilities or even taken antibiotics, according to...