Even it it works, I can’t see many patients opting for this treatment:
Clostridium difficile is a particular problem among patients who have been prescribed strong antibiotics as they also wipe out the so-called ‘friendly’ disease-fighting bacteria in the intestine. Faecal ‘transplants’, as they are known, are believed to restore the bacteria to levels at which they help the recovery process.Doctors involved in the trials admit there are “obvious aesthetic problems” in the treatment, which involves patients ingesting a liquidised sample of faeces from a partner or close relative.
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I’ve seen this treated with fecal enemas as well.
why a close relative? what if…we could find a person with the *perfect* stool for C. Diff? One man’s **** is another’s gold! and worth a lot of money.
On a more serious note, women with recurrent yeast infections eat yogurt with live cultures with varying levels of success, I’m sure we could breed bacteria into a similar food model.
The infected patient doesn’t *eat* the liquefied stool for the love of god. It’s administered via an enema.
It isnt “eaten”..its a transfusion process, done after much screening. Highly succesful and much more commonly done in Europe. Im a healthy 44 year old woman in my third recurrence of this nasty beast, and make no mistake, Id do it. Anyone that recurs with C Diff is nodding in agreement with me too…its a HORRID disease. Transfusion and success – versus dangerous false negative lab results, months of meds and appeasing MDs that have no idea how to fix it, stacks and stacks of medical bills….I’ll take the transfusions ANY day.
probiotics are a hugely successful tool for treating C Diff. Florastor seems to be the “probi of choice”, but studies have been done and its proven effective in some, not all, cases. Its very expensive of course, but well worth the price if it brings relief. Ask a pharmacist, they seem to be more open to probiotics, as MDs generally “cant” really endorse them. Some tell you to eat yogurt, but the capsules have billions of live cultures in comparison, and go right to the gut. best of luck to all battling this bug.
i just got diaganosed two weeks ago. i’ve read everything online. no confidence, other than my symptoms are not severe. other than mils abdominal discomfortable and a little blood stool had no idea. tried flagyl, currently on vancomicin. everything seems pretty much unproven with little long term results. also taking acidophlis. nasty disease i’d say. anybody have any suggestion?
Frankly, if it were me I’d use Florastor for C.Diff. My girlfriend swears by it, as does one of my parents friends; and neither would use anything else when they have to use antibiotics or when they travel. My parents used it, on my girlfriends’ recommendation, while on a Caribbean cruise and they had no problems either as they went from island to island and sampled the local cuisine.
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