Free Republic

Imagine a low-cost treatment for a life-threatening infection that could cure up to 90 percent of patients with minimal side effects, often in a few days. It may sound like a miracle drug, but this cutting-edge treatment is profoundly simple—though somewhat icky: take the stool of healthy patients to cure those with hard-to-treat intestinal infections. A small but growing number of physicians have begun using these so-called fecal transplants to treat Clostridium difficile, commonly referred to as C-diff, a bacterial infection that causes nausea, cramping and diarrhea. The germ afflicts a half-million Americans annually and kills about 15,000 of them....

The number of cases of a terrifying superbug in NHS hospitals has surged after the Government ignored warnings—and relaxed the rules on fighting infections. Hundreds more patients fell ill with deadly Clostridium difficile—known as C.diff—between April 2014 and March 2015 than in the previous year. The increase, from 13,361 to 14,165, came immediately after the system for fining hospitals with too many cases was dramatically weakened. …

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...

Cold war weaponry to tackle superbugs By Gary Cleland Last Updated: 5:47pm GMT 28/10/2007 Technology developed to protect Britain from biological weapons is being redeployed into hospitals to help destroy superbugs. Among the first hospital trusts to install the air disinfection units will be Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, where at least 90 people died from the bug Clostridium difficile. The machines, first developed at the British defence establishment Porton Down in the 1960s, have been approved by an NHS ethics committee after trials at hospitals in Sunderland, Manchester and Carlisle. Tests showed the machines are capable of killing...

Superbug kills war hero who survived three years as a PoWLast updated at 00:42am on 1st September 2007  The family of a distinguished war veteran have criticised the hospital where he was infected by a killer bug. Major Sam Weller - who survived three years as a prisoner of war - died after catching Clostridium Difficile following an operation on his hip. His relatives said he had been let down by the country he fought for. Major Weller, 88, had surgery at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital but he developed an infection and was given a course of antibiotics. Weeks later...

A great grandmother begged to die after she was left in her own filth after contracting two deadly superbugs. Eileen Scott pleaded with daughter Ann Cunningham 'how long does it take to die' as she lay in excruciating pain in her soiled hospital bed. She was dead soon after. Mrs Scott, 85, had been admitted to hospital following treatment for breast cancer. But instead of recovering from the effects of the treatment, her health took a dramatic turn for the worse as she contracted first MRSA, and then the virulent superbug Clostridium Difficile. In days the once bright and outgoing...

It begins as microscopic bacteria that invades the intestine with the potential to kill in extreme cases, or cause severe bouts of diarrhea in other instances. Probably a hundred cases have occurred in the past year in the Antelope Valley, though most of those stricken with Clostridium difficile survived, according to Dr. Michael Cohen, an infectious diseases specialist in Lancaster who tends to patients at Antelope Valley and Lancaster Community hospitals. "We've had cases at both hospitals," Cohen said. "Cases have been documented nationwide. At least three patients in Antelope Valley died." Deaths usually result from one of two conditions:...

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...

Roche, whose drug Tamiflu is in great demand as a preparation for a possible influenza pandemic, is not the only company reaping a financial windfall from a treatment for a contagious disease. And in this case, the health threat is not merely a potential one. ViroPharma, a formerly struggling biotechnology company, sells Vancocin, the only drug approved to treat Clostridium difficile, a bacterium that already kills thousands of people a year in this country and is apparently becoming more common and more deadly. The life-saving drug has turned out to be a financial lifesaver for ViroPharma which, almost by...