Active clinical trials for "Clostridium Infections"

This study will investigate experimental colonisation with non-toxigenic C.difficile (NTCD) in healthy volunteers. Main outcomes will be safety, tolerability, dose needed to obtain colonisation with NTCD to ultimately determine host microbiota factors associated with susceptibility to colonisation.

A phase III randomized clinical trial in proportion 2:1 in favor of oral vancomycin (experimental treatment), multicentric, national, double-blinded, controlled with placebo. The main objective is to evaluate the effectiveness of treatment with oral vancomycin to reduce the incidence of Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI) in patients who suffered previous CDI and who need further hospitalization and treatment with systemic antibiotic therapy in the 90 days after the first CDI.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and spatial analysis have become important tools in public health informatics but have rarely been applied to the hospital setting. In this study we apply these tools to address the challenge of Hospital Acquired Infections (HAIs) by building, implementing, and evaluating a new computer application which incorporates mapping and geographic data to assist hospital epidemiologists in identifying HAI clusters and assessing transmission risk. We expect that incorporation of geographic information into the workflow of hospital epidemiologists will have a profound effect on our understanding of disease transmission and HAI risk factors in the hospital setting, radically altering the workflow and speed of response of infection preventionists and improving their ability to prevent HAIs.

Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) is a major pathogen causing serious healthcare-associated diarrheal illness in patients. Prevention of healthcare facility-onset C. difficile infection (CDI) is essential. Many CDI cases are caused by the transmission of the pathogen from patients who carry the bacteria, but do not have symptoms. However, there are limited data on how to prevent the transmission of C. difficile from patients who do not have symptoms. Universal gloving practices - the use of gloves by all healthcare workers for all patient contacts - may reduce CDI cases. In this study, the investigators will examine the effectiveness of universal gloving practices as compared to standard of care (use of gloving for contact only in patients with known CDI or other infections). The investigators will compare the effects of these practices on the transmission of C. difficile within participating hospital units to determine if universal gloving is an effective practice to prevent healthcare-associated CDI.

Data on the seroprevalence of antibodies to Clostridioides difficile surface proteins and toxins are scarce. In 1983, Viscidi et al. showed that antibodies to C. difficile toxins A and B were detected in 60 to 70% of an adult population. Two-thirds of the adults tested had a serological trace, probably linked to a previous encounter with C. difficile. One of the hypotheses raised would be that exposure to this pathogen occurs very early and regularly throughout our lives. Indeed, in this study, antibodies to C. difficile toxins were detected from early childhood and persisted over time even after 60 years. The antibody response did not appear to vary with age or terrain. However, these results were only qualitative and did not allow for inter-individual variations due to the limitations of the techniques used at the time. Finally, in this work, it was important to underline that the neutralizing character of the cytotoxic effect of toxins on cell culture was not observed in all patients. Since this seminal work, several studies have shown that the host immune response plays a central role in the pathophysiology of C. difficile infections (CDI). In 2000, Kyne et al. showed that after colonization with a toxigenic C. difficile strain, patients with asymptomatic carriage had significantly higher serum levels of IgG directed against toxin A than patients who developed disease. Subsequently, they also showed in 2001 that a serum response directed against toxin A after a first episode of CDI was associated with less recurrence. Finally, Leav et al. showed in 2010 that a serum response directed against C. difficile toxin B was also associated with protection against recurrent forms. Several studies have also suggested that the host immune response, this time directed against colonization factors, could also play a major role in the evolution and prognosis of CDI. In a previous study, investigators showed a significant difference in the level of anti-SlpA antibodies (S-layer component) between CDI patients and control patients. At the same time, the epidemiology of CDI has changed since 2003 due to the emergence of a new epidemic and hypervirulent strain (PCR ribotype 027) producing a third toxin, the binary toxin. The humoral response to this toxin remains poorly described to date. On the basis of these numerous studies, new therapeutic immunization strategies (active or passive) aimed at neutralizing the action of C. difficile toxins and colonization factors have been or are being developed. However, it remains to identify the patients likely to benefit from these innovative strategies. This was the main objective of the SERODIFF study (currently being finalized), which identified certain patient profiles in which no seroconversion or isotype class switching of antibodies was observed following CDI. The absence of neutralizing antibody production would seem to correlate with recurrent forms. Thus, these patients would be those who could be eligible for a passive immunization strategy such as the administration of anti-toxin B monoclonal antibodies, bezlotoxumab, recently marketed in France. In this study, investigators aim to evaluate the seroprevalence stratified by age group, sex and by the main risk factors for CDI. Furthermore, the neutralizing and protective effect of the detected antibodies against C. difficile virulence factors will be studied.

Recurrent Clostridioides difficle infection (rCDI) is a very significant problem in its own right and current fecal microbiota transplant (FMT) -based therapeutics will benefit from their optimization for this indication. It is likely that appropriate nutritional support coupled with microbiota-based drugs will yield superior clinical outcomes. However, both diet and gut microbiome are very complex. This project, which is based on a wealth of FMT experience, both clinical and investigational, over the past decade along with the novel techniques developed to identify dietary patterns and food groups that explain the most variation in gut microbiome, offers an ideal platform for performing systematic research in nutritional support that promotes gut microbiota health. The purpose is to Generate preliminary data with regards to tolerability of the Microbiota enhancing and nourishing diet (MEND) and its effects on the fecal microbiota in rCDI patients following FMT with the goal of developing larger clinical trials aimed to optimize post-FMT dietary management.

This is a prospective, multicenter, open-label Phase 3 study of a microbiota suspension of intestinal microbes. Patients who have had at least one recurrence of CDI after a primary episode and have completed at least one round of standard-of-care oral antibiotic therapy or have had at least two episodes of severe CDI resulting in hospitalization may be eligible for the study. Subjects may receive a second RBX2660 enema if they are deemed treatment failures following the initial enema per the protocol-specified treatment failure definition.

Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) is a treatment that restores the balance of gut bacteria and is the most effective treatment for patients who suffer from recurrent Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI) brought on by antibiotic use. Although highly effective, we do not understand how FMT actually works. Freeze-dried or lyophilized fecal microbiota transplant (LFMT) has been shown to be effective. Recently, filtered fecal slurry, free of any live bacteria, has also been shown to cure 5 such patients. The advantage of the filtered fecal slurry is that it may be safer to patients as it does not contain any live bacteria. We have conducted a pilot study comparing LFMT to lyophilized sterile fecal filtrate (LSFF) in 9 patients, and found that the success rate of treatment was 80% vs 75% in these 2 groups. Therefore we need to perform a larger multicenter study to compare LFMT to LSFF to determine the success rate of curing these patients.

Previous data have shown that integrated information from single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of the host DNA, interleukin 8 (IL-8) and the enrichment of the stool microbiome can indicate the patients with infection by Clostridioides difficile (CDI) who are at risk for unfavorable outcome. This integrated information is forming the BEYOND score. The aim of the BEYOND randomized clinical trial (RCT) is to investigate if adjunctive bezlotoxumab treatment to the current standard-of-care may decrease the likelihood of unfavorable outcome for patients who score positive by the BEYOND score.

Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) is a leading cause of hospital-associated gastrointestinal illness, associated with significant morbidity and mortality and has a high burden on health-care system. The incidence of CDI has increased to epidemic proportion worldwide over the past decade. Community-acquired CDI, elderly and hospitalized patients receiving antibiotics are the main group at risk for developing CDI. Currently, the first-line treatment for C. difficile-associated diarrhea includes cessation of the antibiotic implicated in the development of CDI, treatment with metronidazole or vancomycin and recently Fidaxomicin which is yet to be available in Hong Kong. However, disease recurrence is an increasing problem and 20% to 60% of patients experience at least one recurrence within a few weeks of completion of antibiotic treatment. Moreover, an increasing number of patients who require life-saving emergency colectomy experience persistent CDI after surgery. Until recently, an effective treatment against recurrent CDI is not available. Generally, repeated and extended courses of vancomycin are prescribed. Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) defined as infusion of feces from healthy donors to affected subjects has attracted great interest in recent years and is now recommended as the most effective therapy for CDI not responding to standard therapies. Systematic reviews of prospective trials, case series and one randomized controlled trial have shown an overall cure rate of close to 100%. More than 50% of patients stated they would have FMT as their preferred first treatment option if CDI were to recur. This proposal aims to investigate the efficacy of FMT as first line therapy in patients with severe CDI and to assess changes in the fecal microbiota after FMT using pyrosequencing techniques.