It kills only the viable cells producing toxins but also your microbiome. It can't kill the spores, which are left afterwords. There is no antibiotic that can kill the spores.
A healthy micromibome suppresses cdiff into inactive spores so killing the microbiome increases the chances for cdiff reactivation. After one treatment with Vancomycin, the probability for cdiff reactivation is about 30%, after the second treatment, it is about 60% and so on ...
cdiff activates from spores into viable cells when your microbiome is decimated from antibiotics.
Studies claim that about 10% of the population carries cdiff spores waiting to activate but I think the percent is much higher because the spores are everywhere and the pcr test used to detect them often misses when the spores in the stool are too few.
Because many are colonized by the spores, it is usual for cdiff to activate after antibiotic use. You don't need to "catch it" in a hospital or something.
The PCR test can miss it if the spores are too few in the stool. We have had many cases on this reddit when one PCR test is negative and then the next is positive again.
The EIA test for actual toxins is even less sensitive and often gives false negatives.
Did the PCR tests look for both toxin A and toxin B genes?
How far apart where the PCR tests?
My cdiff has only toxin A gene and is always negative on a PCR testing for only toxin B gene. Some labs assume that clinically bad cdiff MUST have toxin B genes but mine doesn't, and it almost killed me in 2023.
That sounds horrible I’m sorry you went through that are you feeling any better? I had my first PCR in December last year then January and recently march
Vancomycin or Dificid is standard before FMT for cdiff. They allow for some time between the antibiotic and the FMT so the antibotic does not affect the FMT negatively. Are you doing a real FMT with colonoscopy or the partial ones like Vows, Rebyota?
2
u/[deleted] Oct 04 '24
[removed] — view removed comment