Tag: difficile

A newly published paper in PNAS details a research breakthrough that provides a promising starting point for scientists to create drugs that can cure C. diff—a virulent health care-associated infection that causes severe diarrhea, nausea, internal bleeding, and potentially death. The bacteria affects roughly half-a-million Americans and causes nearly 15,000 deaths in the U.S. annually.

Scientists have made a breakthrough in the hunt for a new vaccine for killer hospital bug Clostridioides difficile (C. diff). University of Exeter researchers first identified a gene in C. diff responsible for producing a protein that aids in binding the bacteria to the gut of its victims. In collaboration with researchers at Paris-SUD University,

Hospitalized patients at high risk for C. difficile infection—a species of bacterium with symptoms that range from diarrhea to life-threatening inflammation of a colon—should be recommended probiotics, says Dr. Bradley Johnston. An associate professor in the Department of Community Health & Epidemiology at Dalhousie Medical School, Dr. Johnston led a meta-analysis comparing data from 18