22 Oct Microbiome Signature Can Predict Risk of C. difficile Treatment Failure

Dr. Sahil Khanna

MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Dr. Sahil Khanna MBBS
Assistant Professor of Medicine
Mayo Clinic

Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?

Response: C. difficile infection patients are at a high risk of complications such as treatment failure. Gut microbiota signatures associated with CDI have been described but it is unclear if differences in gut microbiota play a role in response to therapy. No studies have identified predictors of treatment failure and we aimed to identified gut microbiota signatures to predict response to treatment for primary C. difficile . While there were no clinical predictors of treatment response, there were increases in certain genera in patients with successful treatment response in the fecal samples at initial diagnosis compared to non-responders. A risk index built from this panel of microbes highly differentiated between patients based on response and ROC curve analysis showed that this risk index was a strong predictor of treatment response, with a high area under the curve of 0.83..

Medical Research: What should clinicians and patients take away from your report?

Response: Gut microbiota signatures can be used to predict response to initial treatment potentially allowing patients likely to fail treatment to be treated earlier with more effective therapies such as fecal microbiota transplantation. An external validation cohort is needed to further validate these findings

Citation:

ACG2015 abstract October 2015

Gut Microbiota Changes as Predictors of Treatment Failure in Primary Clostridium Difficile Infection

Dr. Sahil Khanna MBBS (2015). Microbiome Signature Can Predict Risk of C. difficile Treatment Failure MedicalResearch.com

[wysija_form id=”5″]

Last Updated on October 22, 2015 by Marie Benz MD FAAD