Use of Probiotics for Primary and Secondary Prophylaxis for Reducing rate of C. difficile as Standardized Health-Care Practice

Hats off to bacteria! This article summarizes that bacteria are good for our body and help us function a lot better. Bacteria live in our guts, in our mouths, and on our skin. Overuse of antibiotics has disturbed the bacterial ecosystem, possibly so much that it is irreversible. In 1999 Lawrence Brandt a professor of medicine and surgery at the Albert Einstein College of medicine had success when trying to help a patient combat diarrhea induced by clostridium difficile. A patient developed diarrhea after taking a course of antibiotics for sinusitis; nothing could shake her C.difficile infection. Brandt reasoned the initial antibiotic treatment had killed gut bacteria that promote digestive health; not knowing which strain to replace, he transplanted stool form her husband. That night she reported marked improvement- for the first time in six months. This procedure has helped patients, but hopefully in the future doctors will be able to administer the particular strain of bacteria that is needed. 99% of the bacteria we harbor are resistant to culture in the lab. It was this impossible to study bacteria until the last decade or so, when DNA sequencing techniques allowed researchers to obtain gene sequences from as little as one bacterial cell. With this researchers found that bacteria cells in our bodies outnumber our human cells. Bacterial exposure throughout our lifetime is needed for our wellbeing, thinking, and functioning, contributing to conditions such as diabetes, obesity, allergies, asthma, and atherosclerosis, as well as to anxiety and mood and cognition disorders. These conditions have become more prominent because of our obsession with sanitation has eliminated the exposure to bacteria humans used to routinely get throu...

When antibiotics first began to see widespread American usage in the 1940’s, they were heralded as a miracle drug, a description that was not far from the mark considering the great number of debilitating or fatal illnesses that they could rapidly cure. In a time where bacterial diseases that today carry few serious health risks in healthy adults—such as strep throat, ear infections, syphilis, and wound infections—often led to serious debilitation or death, the invention of antibiotics was among the greatest single improvements in public health ever made. And today, more than three quarters of a century after Alexander Fleming discovered the antimicrobial properties of penicillin, antibiotics are as important as ever in maintaining a healthy population, from their ability to treat common infections to the safeguards they provide patients undergoing surgeries and other infection-prone procedures that could otherwise be too risky to perform. However, today many doctors and researchers are beginning to fear that this golden era of antibiotics may be coming to an end due to the ever-increasing threat of antibiotic resistance. There are a number of practices that contribute to increased antibiotic resistance, including the unnecessary prescription, improper dosage, and incorrect usage of antibiotic drugs by humans. But one of the major potential causes of antibiotic resistance does not involve human patients at all. Rather, many believe that the excessive use of antibiotics in food animals is among the leading threats to the future of human ability to fight bacterial infections.

Often patients encompassing with Clostridium difficile have no symptoms or they may express symptoms of mild diarrhea, pseudomembranous colitis, and inflammation of the colon causing pain (Mitchell, 2014). Clostridium difficile is a bacterial infection of the intestine and it may occur in patients who are immunocompromised or taking broad-spectrum antibiotics. Walter (2014) explains that the most important risk factor for CDI continues to be recent administration of antibiotics. The infection occurs from depression of the normal flora of the bowel through the administration of antibiotics. The depression of the normal flora increases the number of C. difficile bacteria within the intestines. The overgrowth of C. difficile causes diarrhea. Abdominal cramps, fever, and leukocytosis are noted in most patients. Symptoms usually begin 4 to 10 days after the initiation of antibiotic therapy (Elsevier,

Currently, there are extensive studies that confirm the actual benefits of probiotics in helping reduce the intensity of the symptoms that are associated with diarrhea. Case in point, when people take antibiotics, they are non-selective in attacking both beneficial and harmful bacteria.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), describes antibiotic resistance is the ability of bacteria or other microbes to resist the effects of antibiotic treatment. () So instead of being destroyed by the medications, the bacteria survives and continues to reproduce, resultant in new communicable diseases that even more difficult to treat.

Clostridium difficile: This infection is most common in people who are already on antibiotics. Certain bacteria can live normally in the bowel in just the right numbers to keep it healthy.

In conclusion E. faecalis can cause severe life-threating disease in humans and mammals especially in our health care environments. They have increased in antibiotic resistance and are also becoming very challenging for physicians to treat. Recently stronger and more specific antibiotics are being newly developed.

Clostridium Difficile (C. difficile) is a bacteria-related gastrointestinal infection that is caused (etiology) by the use of antibiotics therapy or exposure to the C. difficile spores (Swartz, 2013). According to published reports compiled by the California Department of Public Health (CDPH), National Safety Network (NHSN), and the Center for Disease Control Prevention (CDC), the rate of CDI have a major financial impact (costs associated with medical management of CDI) on health care institution across the United States. CDI is major concern for hospital administrators and patients at Sharp Grossmont Hospital (SGH) and other in hospitals within the Sharp Healthcare Network (SHN). According to data released by CPDH and the CDC, from January to December 2012 three hospitals within the (SHN) reported 136 new cases of CDI. Statistical data also show that 20,000 to 34,000 patients were admitted or readmitted to the hospitals for recurrent complications related to CDI such as electrolyte imbalance, nutrition deficits, and systemic bacteremia (CDPH, 2013).

C. difficile, Bacteria (Domain), Firmicutes (Phylum), Clostridia (Class), Clostridiales (Order), Clostridiaceae (Family), Clostridium (Genus), C. difficile (Species), is a large gram-positive, anaerobic, spore-forming, motile, rod bacteria. C. difficile is associated with colitis and diarrhea, especially in horses (Divers and Ball, 1996). This bacterium requires five amino acids for energy metabolism, (leucine, lysine, proline, tryptophan, and valine) and an addition of

In addition to the ability of eliminating bacteria similar to antibiotics, HDPs can also naturalize endotoxin produced by gram-negative bacteria, thereby limiting the inflammatory reaction in host [7]. Moreover, with the difference of mechanisms comparing to antibiotics, HDPs will cause less toxicity toward host cells and have a low risk of microbial resistance [8]. HDPs can be induced by various factors. Rather than pathogens, some dietary resources such as fatty acids, histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor, curcumin, vitamin D3, zinc, and disaccharides were reported to have HBD1 and LL37 induction activities, thereby boosting HDPs [3,9-11]. Those results capacitated the therapeutic possibility of HDPs-inducing drug and treatment.

C. difficile infection (CDI) is a dangerous healthcare-associated infection as well as a growing burden, especially with the appearance of more potent strains in the early 2000s. Clostridium difficile was initially identified as possessing the ability to initiate pseudomembranous colitis in the late 1970s. Asymptomatic colonization in healthy adults has been detected in only 3% of individuals, whereas the pervasiveness of such colonization among patients in long-term-care facilities is approximately 50%. People colonized with C. difficile act as a reservoir of contamination by infecting the environment with C. difficile spores, consequently leading to an increase of the pathogen on the hand...

applied probiotic capsules for bacterial vaginosis and other vaginal infections: a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled study. European Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Reproductive Biology, 168(2013), 75-79. doi: 10.1016/j.ejogrb.2012.12.031p

However, microorganisms are now evolving and developing unprecedented resistance to penicillin and other once potent drugs, like vancomyocin. Currently, vancomyocin is the most potent drug on the market, and ¼ of all enterococci are resistant to it ("A New Gap…," 1997). In the April 28, 1994 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers identified a bacteria that was resistant to all antibiotics (Lewis, 1997).

The role of intestinal fauna was not well understood before this. Recent microbial research has shown that bacteriotherapy can also be used for treatment. “Colonic infusion of donor human intestinal flora can reverse ulcerated colitis in select patients”.