Possible NEW/upcoming therapy - colonization with c. diff

[EsperaL]

This treatment is not yet on the market- but thought I would share here after reading this Forbes article. Hope is a good thing.

"A team at the Hines VA hospital and 44 other sites used a novel approach to therapy—a sort of biological warfare, in which they fed some of the patients spores of a specific strain of C. difficile, NTCD-M3, in an attempt to repopulate their bowel with a nontoxigenic strain. By recolonizing the bowel, this way, they hypothesized that recurrent infections would be reduced....Recurrent C. diff infection occurred in 30% of placebo patients vs. 11% of the treated patients, with the lowest recurrence (5%) in those who received the higher dose. Only 2% of patients who were successfully colonized became recurrently ill, vs. 31% of those who were not colonized."

The therapy is still going through trials.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/judystone/2 ... colitis/2/

[beth22]

Interesting. Not sure I would want to be populated with any kind of c diff after all I've been through. I wonder if it would have other side effects, like IBS symptoms. I guess we will have to wait and find out.

[seekingcure]

There is another article about this treatment that says, in theory, the nontoxigenic c-diff could acquire the genes needed to produce toxins while in the person's gut. So I would be hesitant to try this also until there is a lot more research done. I remembered reading about this before and searched for the article. Here's the link: http://www.livescience.com/50740-c-diff ... tment.html I believe it may also be posted under Media Reports.