Clostridium Difficile Infection

The most common infection in the health care setting is Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) and it is associated with sky rocketing hospital costs, deaths and complications. (Zacharioudakis, et al., 2015) According to studies released in the United States by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 2015, the current economic burden of infectious C. difficile has become the most common microbial cause of recurrent antibiotic-associated diarrhea and other gastrointestinal illnesses and costs the American Health care system up to 4.8 billion each year. (CDC, 2015) These studies also show “nearly half a million Americans suffered from C difficile infections in one year,” additionally 1 in 5 patients experience a reoccurrence of
Additionally, his study shows these colonized patients have a six times higher risk of developing an infection vs the noncolonized patients and show a connection with previous hospitalizations 3 months prior. Once infected and treated, the reoccurrence of infection increases by up to 40 - 65% within the first 8 weeks. (Surawicz et al., 2013)
C difficile is a gram negative, spore forming, rod shaped anaerobic bacterium and is responsible worldwide for extended hospital stays, readmissions and mortality. (Nanwa, 2015). Infections are spread by fecal-oral route, is noninvasive and produces multiple toxins which lead to conditions from mild diarrhea to pseudomembranous colitis, toxic megacolon,
Disruption of the normal gut flora from wide spread use of broad spectrum antibiotics is pivotal to the development and pathogenesis of RCDI. The standard treatment of oral Vancomycin while effective is not without significant side effects, while treatments using FMT shows promising high response rates with excellent safety records all the while restoring the gastrointestinal microbiome to a healthy state. (Rao & Young,