Zinc and C diff

[kelseym]

I was browsing around in another site and came across an article in the treatments section that indicates C Diff toxin receptors need Zinc to bind to your cells. Zinc is generally recommended to help heal the gut and keep your immune system up but according to this article - it may not be helpful for C diff recovery. I copied pasted below and included the link which talks about Seres-109, Ridinilazole, the vaccines and other things.

They found that one small section of the toxin is “highly conserved,” meaning that its sequence of amino acids is identical to the same sequence in other Clostridium species.

This “suggests that antibodies specific for this conserved region could provide protection against multiple toxin-mediated clostridium infections and points to a generalizable strategy for generating safe vaccine antigens for this class of toxins,” they conclude.

In addition, Nicole Chumbler, a graduate student in the Lacy lab who is now a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School, found that zinc is bound to the toxin and is required for its activity. Small molecules targeting the zinc-binding enzyme could block the toxin’s effects.

http://cdifffoundation.org/category/c-d ... nt/page/3/