Culprits identified in doubling of deadly diarrhea cases
It looks like some researchers wouldn’t know a smoking gun if it they were holding one in their hands.
Because a team out of the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine just picked one up, examined it, and put it right back where they found it!
This new research is about what the CDC calls “deadly diarrhea,” a.k.a. C. diff.
It seems that the “most difficult” cases of C. diff — those that keep recurring even after they appear to have been cured — are on the rise big time. In slightly over a decade, they’ve gone up close to 200 percent.
And these researchers have told us exactly why that is, even if they’re pretending they didn’t.
When ‘unknown’ is anything but
Clostridium difficile, otherwise known as C. diff, is everywhere. You may even have this pathogen in your intestines already — but if your gut bacteria are in tip-top condition, they’ll keep it under control.
However, because a course of antibiotics wipes out the beneficial bugs in your gut flora, taking them can make you a sitting duck for a C. diff infection, which can give you several days of Montezuma’s revenge — complete with stomach pain and cramping. You’ll be staying very close by your bathroom!
Believe it or not, that was the good news.
The bad news is what these Perelman researchers discovered: that big rise in so many cases of recurring, devastating C. diff. A severe infection with this bug, which spreads very easily, can cause diarrhea 15 or more times a day, terrible abdominal pain, dehydration, fever, blood or pus in your bowel movements, and a rapid pulse.
Which is why, as I mentioned, the CDC now calls it “deadly diarrhea,” because it can — and does — kill. In fact, it’s estimated that close to 30,000 in the U.S. alone die from it every year.
And recurring infections of it look as if they are becoming epidemic in the U.S.
Dr. James Lewis, a professor of gastroenterology who led this new research, examined the data of over 40 million patients, looking for cases where doctors needed to repeatedly treat them with closely spaced rounds of heavy-duty antibiotics to treat C. diff.
And to his shock, while cases of one-time C. diff infections went up around 43 percent in the time between 2001 and 2012, incidents of the pathogen that couldn’t be cured increased by a whopping 189 percent.
So what’s going on?
Dr. Lewis and his team put three specific kinds of drugs at the top of their list of likely causes: antibiotics, steroids, and proton pump inhibitors, those easily found OTC meds intended to reduce acid, such as Nexium and Prilosec.
But if you think this vital information made any waves, well, it didn’t — not even to the researchers themselves! Despite these important findings, they took a giant step backward and said the reason for this gigantic rise in ongoing C. diff infections “is unknown.”
Seriously, it’s almost enough to make you want to bang your head against the wall!
Of course, as an eAlert reader, you’ve heard plenty about the connection between these meds and this bug. In fact, just a couple of months ago I told you about a study out of the Mayo Clinic that also made the connection between repeated C. diff infections and PPI drugs.
As if we needed any more reasons to ditch these meds, a couple of weeks ago I told you about research from the Washington University School of Medicine that found taking PPI drugs can up your risk of dying by 50 percent!
At this point, we don’t need any more studies, reports, or press releases on this subject. We already know enough to protect ourselves — and you can start by following these three steps:
#1: Only take antibiotics when absolutely necessary!
#2: Keep your gut health in good shape by taking a daily probiotic and including more probiotic foods, such as yogurt and kefir, in your diet.
#3: Ditch the “purple pill” and all of its friends. If you’re currently taking a PPI drug for acid, slowly wean yourself off of it. And if you’re not, don’t ever start!
Instead, do things to control acid naturally. For example, try sipping on a glass of water with a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar on a daily basis, elevating your head with a wedge when you go to bed at night, and cutting down on high-acid beverages.
“Multiple recurring C. Diff infections on the rise” John Commins, July 9, 2017, MedpageToday, medpagetoday.com
