Clostridium difficile is the No. 1 hospital-acquired infection in the United States and leads to 29,000 deaths each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The illness most commonly affects people in hospitals and nursing homes who are taking antibiotics and may have an underlying medical condition.

Clostridium difficile Image/CDC
Clostridium difficile
Image/CDC

Fecal Microbiota Transplantation (FMT) is a procedure in which a doctor extracts bacteria from fecal matter from a healthy donor, mixes the bacteria in a solution and transfers the microbiota to a person with C-diff via colonoscopy, endoscopy, sigmoidoscopy or enema.

Professor in the Department of Epidemiology, Human Genetics and Environmental Sciences at UTHealth School of Public Health and senior author of a study published in the journal, Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics, Herbert DuPont, MD joined me on the Outbreak News This Week Radio Show to talk about the study that looked at comparisons between fresh, frozen or freeze-dried FMT via  colonoscopy in the treatment of recurrent Clostridium difficile, or C-diff infection.

“This is the first study to show that frozen and freeze-dried microbiota are as good as fresh material, so that we never have to use fresh again. It’s a logistical nightmare to use fresh product. If we were going to treat you today, a donor would have come in two hours before, we would have already isolated the sample and then we would have to administer it the same day. A pill form of the product could make all of this easier,” said Dr. DuPont.

LISTEN to the interview below:

The Outbreak News This Week Radio Show, the first and only radio program dedicated to infectious disease and health news and information, airs every Sunday at 8 pm ET in the Tampa Bay area on AM 1380 The Biz and online at http://1380thebiz.com/

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