A gut infection caused by the Clostridium difficile, or C-diff, is very common in hospitals. Doctors suggest that a therapy of giving a non-toxin producing C-diff bacteria strain to patients may help in the fight against common hospital infections.
The C-diff infection mainly affects people during or after a hospital stay. People who have a long antibiotic course or a weak immune system are more likely to get the infection.
Medical experts explain that C-diff bacteria are present in the gut; however, antibiotics may affect the balance of good and bad bacteria in the intestines. The C-diff infection can cause diarrhea, inflammation of the colon or abdominal cramps.
Dr. Dale Gerding, a professor of medicine at the Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, who is also the lead researcher of the study, revealed that C-diff infections are on the rise in U.S. hospitals. In 2011, around 500,000 Americans were affected with the bacteria, with 29,000 dying within a month.
Antibiotics keep a check on the toxin producing strain of the C-diff bacteria, but they do not get rid of the bacteria completely, which means that many patients often get the infection again.
Dr. Gerding said that the latest study involved giving a non-toxin producing strain of C-diff bacteria to patients treated with antibiotics. The researchers hoped that the good bug would proliferate in the gut and crowd over the toxin-producing strain of the bacteria.
The study involved 125 patients who were given the novel therapy. Researchers found that just 11 percent of all participants experienced recurrent infection in six weeks.
Dr. Gerding also said that a subgroup of patients were given a higher dose of the good version of C-diff, and only 5 percent suffered from an infection again. In comparison, more than 30 percent of patients who received a placebo drug were infected with the bacteria again.
Good C-diff bacteria do not stay in the gut forever, but the therapy sets up a stage for patients to flourish good bacteria in their intestines so these good bacteria can crowd the bad bacteria and reduce infection.
"This is a very important study because of the high recurrence rate of C. difficile infections, and because [recurrent] infections become progressively harder to treat," said Dr. Lawrence Brandt, emeritus chief of gastroenterology at Montefiore Medical Center, New York City.
The study is detailed in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
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