I am 36 years old and have recurrent c diff. I was first diagnosed in 2009 when I was a healthy firefighter/paramedic. The disease almost cost me my life. I dropped 80 lbs and was a walking skeleton. I was in and out of the hospital for two months and then in a nursing home at the ripe old age of 34. I made a promised to myself that I would recover and I did for two and a half years.
A recent study by a research team at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City showed that a single dose of clindamycin wiped out 90% of bacteria types in mice intestines. While we mostly think of bacteria as something to be avoided, our gastrointestinal system relies on billions of good bacteria to digest food and protect us from harmful bacteria like C. diff. In fact, the bacteria in our guts is a huge part of our body’s overall immune system. By eliminating 90% of the bacteria in the study mice’s intestines, just one dose of clindamycin left them “unusually susceptible” to C. diff. The infected mice “developed severe weight loss, and had a mortality rate of roughly 40 percent.”
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By Daniela Nuñez “14,000 Americans die every year from diarrhea-causing C. difficile (or C. diff for short) infections and 337,000 people are hospitalized, according to a new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Unlike other healthcare-associated infections that have been on the decline over the past decade, C. …
