See C. diff campaign

Clostridioides difficile (or C. diff) is the most common healthcare associated infection. Help us stop the spread of this preventable infection.

  What Can Be Done?

While Clostridium difficile infections (CDIs) have been skyrocketing over the past few years, examples from other countries and research done throughout the US demonstrate that change is possible.

 Why C. difficile infection spreads despite increased sanitation practices

Once widely considered an antibiotic- and hospital-associated pathogen, recent research into C. difficile has shown the infection is more frequently acquired outside of hospitals. Now, a team of researchers has shown that GI disturbances, such as those caused by food poisoning and laxative abuse, trigger susceptibility to colonization by C. difficile, and carriers remain C. difficile-positive for a year or longer.

Clostridium difficile Is More Common Than You Think

Despite the numbers, for the most part, the occurrence of C. difficile infection has been isolated to one single environment – the hospital. Yet other areas, such as long-term care facilities, may also be burdened with this pathogen. But even in the community, people may become infected. According to models used to represent the United States, the rate of transmission is estimated to be about 0.1%.

Wide Use of Antibiotics Allows C. Diff to Flourish

Dr. Gerding foresees the possibility that people taking an antibiotic might simultaneously receive a dose of live therapeutic bacteria that can prevent colonization by hazardous organisms. “If this works, it will be huge in preventing transmission of C. diff.,” he said.

Behind One Hospital's Fight Against Deadly Infection

Nationwide, about one in 20 patients entering a hospital will get a potentially deadly infection, accounting for some $33 billion in preventable costs, according to the federal Department of Health and Human Services. Dangers lurk not only in vulnerable places like operating rooms. Recent studies have shown that some of the most common surfaces, from sink faucets to TV remote controls, can harbor the most deadly bacteria.

Clostridium difficile: guidance, data and analysis

Clostridium difficile infection is the most important cause of hospital-acquired diarrhoea. Clostridium difficile is an anaerobic bacterium that is present in the gut of up to 3% of healthy adults and 66% of infants. However, Clostridium difficile rarely causes problems in children or healthy adults, as it is kept in check by the normal bacterial population of the intestine.

Clostridium difficile–Associated Diarrhea

Clostridium difficile infection is responsible for approximately 3 million cases of diarrhea and colitis annually in the United States. The mortality rate is 1 to 2.5 percent.

How Scared Should We Be of the Potentially Deadly Bacteria C. Diff?

We hear about stuff that can kill us all the time, of course, and it's hard to tell how worried we should be about individual maladies—remember Ebola? With so much health-related white noise in the news, how concerned should we be about C. Diff?

Promising New Treatment Emerges For Deadly C. difficile Colitis

One important difference is that hands must be washed with soap and water—not an alcohol hand sanitizer—as alcohol is ineffective in killing the spores. So for Hand Hygiene Day, remember to wash your hands.

The Enema of Your Enemy is Your Friend

Here’s the basic idea. People suffering from the hardy C. diff bacteria are generally prescribed a powerful antibiotic. Problem is, the drugs don’t just kill the invaders; they also wipe out much of the beneficial bacteria in the gut. With these “good” microorganisms out of the way, any C. diff stragglers have a much easier time regrouping for a second bout of illness. If there were some way to respawn the beneficial bacteria in the intestines, such re-infections could be warded off.

The Trigger That Turns C. difficile Into A Killer

By determining the mechanism behind toxin production, we now have a better understanding of how the bacterium turns from harmless microbe to killer infection.

When Feces Is the Best Medicine

Fecal transplants have been proven to successfully treat certain types of infection, but proponents of the treatment are still fighting what they say are unnecessarily strict regulations.

When Poop Becomes Medicine

But poop is no panacea either. Scientists have treating all kinds of disorders with fecal transplants with mixed results, while a burgeoning community of DIY enthusiasts have tried the treatment without due awareness of its many risks.

Why Would Anyone Get a Fecal Transplant?

It isn’t very often that a medical procedure inspires a patient-advocacy movement, let alone an Internet fan club. Especially not a procedure that is, well, icky. But that’s undeniably what has happened with fecal transplants, a low-tech practice from back in medical history that has worked its way from outlaw home procedure to papers in major medical journals and a Food and Drug Administration clinical trial.

Why you should never, ever touch that hospital elevator button

It's no secret that hospitals are dirty places. Hospital-acquired infections, like C. difficile, are major killers, and everyday objects on the wards—from white coats to ultrasound equipment—are well-known harborers of bacteria. Now, a new study in the journal Open Medicine has revealed a little-known germ hotspot: the hospital elevator button.

Clostridium Difficile Is the New MRSA

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the hospital there's a tough bug to worry about. Even as hospitals are taking bolder steps to fight MRSA, a nasty infection often contracted during hospital stays, another microbe is quickly becoming more common: Clostridium difficile.

Far more could be done to stop the deadly bacteria C. diff

A USA TODAY investigation shows that C. diff is far more prevalent than federal reports suggest. The bacteria is linked in hospital records to more than 30,000 deaths a year in the United States– about twice federal estimates and rivaling the 32,000 killed in traffic accidents. It strikes about a half-million Americans a year.

Trouble in the Gut, When Antibiotics Work Too Well

Furthermore, studies indicate that C. difficile, so named in the 1930's because it was difficult to isolate and grow in the laboratory, has become more virulent in recent years, perhaps because potent antibiotics killed off less noxious variants of the organism. Superstrains of the organism produce about 20 times as many colon-damaging toxins as typical strains.

A novel ‘smart’ antibiotic may target most common bacterial infection contracted in US hospitals

There are several reasons for this paradox. The current antibiotics used in clinical practice kill many beneficial bacteria in the gut as well as the pathogenic target organism. This loss of good microbes causes an unhealthy shift in the bacterial population in the gut that is referred to as dysbiosis. After the beneficial bacteria are wiped out, C. difficile occupies the void left behind.

An Unusual Cause of Chronic Diarrhea

Syphilis is an important treatable diagnosis to consider in patients with multiple organ symptoms who are suspected to have inflammatory bowel disease or chronic biliary tract disease, particularly in high-risk patients when the clinical and pathologic findings are not entirely typical for those diagnoses.

Antibiotics Weren’t Used to Cure These Patients. Fecal Bacteria Were

In a small study, doctors used so-called fecal transplants to treat a serious gut infection in patients. The transplants, from healthy donors, were as effective as antibiotics.

C. Difficile Is Everywhere – Even on the Bottom of Footwear

“C. diff infection was known historically as a hospital-associated infection, and efforts to reduce the infection and control its spread have been focused on hospitals and long-term care facilities,” said Jinhee Jo, a postdoctoral infectious disease fellow at the University of Houston and presenting author. “Recently, cases of community-acquired C. diff have been increasing, which suggests the need for broader community stewardship.”

Clostridium Difficile (C. Diff)

When your microbiome is in a state of balance, the good guys keep the bad ones under control. If the balance is disrupted—either because the helpful bacteria are eradicated (as can happen when you take antibiotics) or because the harmful community overgrows—your health can suffer. In recent years, one type of bacterium, called Clostridium difficile (C. diff), is presenting particularly difficult challenges, because it causes one of the most common health care-associated infections in the United States. What’s more, about 20% of patients have recurrent infections.

Colitis due to Clostridium difficile toxins: underdiagnosed, highly virulent, and nosocomial

Clostridium difficile colitis is a major complication of antibiotic therapy. Antibiotics cause a reduction in bacteria that normally reside in the colon. If an antibiotic-treated patient ingests C. difficile bacteria, this organism may proliferate in the colon because it is resistant to most antibiotics and because it does not have to compete with the normal bacteria for nutrients. If the C. difficile organism has the gene for toxin production, the toxin can produce a colitis. In addition to antibiotics, other proposed risk factors for development of C. difficile colitis include advanced age, contact with infected patients and with their health care providers, impaired immune function, suppression of gastric acid secretion by a proton pump inhibitor, and postpyloric tube feeding. Many of the risk factors become simultaneously focused on patients admitted to the hospital.

Doctors See Gains Against ‘an Urgent Threat,’ C. Diff

Though randomized, controlled studies are needed to evaluate fecal transplantation, Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University, said, “it’s been much more successful than I initially expected, and it’s become much more feasible, easier to administer.”

Heartburn Drugs May Lead To Serious Diarrhea

If that case of diarrhea just doesn't get better, your heartburn drug could be the reason. The Food and Drug Administration just warned doctors and consumers that popular medicines called proton pump inhibitors may raise the risk for chronic diarrhea caused by Clostridium difficile, a bacterium that you'd rather not have colonizing your intestines.

New antibiotic may clear Clostridium difficile and stop reinfection

A new antibiotic tested in mice works better than our first-line treatments against infection – and prevents reinfection too.

Revealed: The secret superpower that makes C. difficile so deadly

The UVA researchers found that the immune response to C. diff causes tissue damage and even death through a type of immune cell called Th17. This solves a longstanding mystery about why disease severity does not correlate with the amount of bacteria in the body but, instead, to the magnitude of the immune response. It also explains why patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) are more likely to suffer severe C. diff infections and more likely to die from them.

Stool transplants are now standard of care for recurrent C. difficile infections

The main risk factor for CDI is taking antibiotics, which is why doctors discourage unnecessary antibiotic use. Ironically, first-line treatment for CDI is also antibiotics. About 20% of people treated with antibiotics will develop recurrent infections, and the best way of clearing recurrent CDI is with FMT. This is supported by several guidelines. The reason why FMT works so well is largely unknown, but generally speaking it restores important helpful bacteria that help protect against CDI. But while supported by guidelines, FMT is still considered investigational and is not currently FDA-approved.

The Latest Poop On Fecal Transplants Vs. Antibiotics For C. Difficile Diarrhea

How can more poop actually help with severe diarrhea? Isn't that like asking for buckets of water during a flood? Well, when the diarrhea is caused by the antibiotic-resistant bacteria Clostridium difficile, a poop (scientifically called fecal) transplant may help get to the bottom of the problem, according to a research letter published in the New England Journal of Medicine.