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C. Diff. + H. Pylori infection

Thinktank

Thinktank

Senior Member
Messages
1,640
Location
Europe
Recently i started to have a bout of what at first felt like gastritis, so i took a PPI for a few days without any relief. The stomach pain became worse and the inflammation developed into an ulcer, the PPI did nothing except for exacerbating the dysbiosis which led to a C. diff. explosion. So now i have a suspected H. Pylori infection and confirmed C. diff infection, nice!
I can't hold anything down because of the pain so i'm dropping weight very rapidly.
I found out that the hospital i was a patient at now does faecal transplant therapy for C. diff patients, they get the stool from some kind of donorbank.
Has anyone here had a faecal transplant done to cure a c. diff infection, and to repopulate the gut with a healthy microbiome from a donor?
I would love to hear your experiences.
 
katabasis

katabasis

Senior Member
Messages
154
About 2 years ago, I had a series of severe C. Diff infections. During the last one, I was in the hospital for 3 weeks, and even vancomycin was not really working to reduce my symptoms (which was a big problem because I was basically incapable of eating). I asked the attending doctors about FMT and they were sort of dismissive. I managed to find a doctor doing a white label clinical trial for FMT at a nearby hospital, got myself discharged, and got the treatment.

The vast majority of my symptoms (severe diarrhea, severe abdominal pain, severe nausea) were gone within 24 hours. It took a while for me to get over the near-starvation and for the inflammation to fully subside, but FMT was essentially a complete cure. Since then I haven't had even a single recurrence, even after I had to take antibiotics to deal with an infected tooth. It seems like this is a pretty common story to hear for people who get FMTs to treat C. Diff - by every indication it is a very effective treatment.

There are some risks to getting an FMT. It is basically impossible to get a truly high-quality stool donor. I got to see the exclusion criteria used for donors for the clinical trial I was part of, and I felt they were a bit lacking. Occasionally people getting FMTs acquire random immune or inflammatory conditions from the donor. It doesn't seem to occur that often, and I think for most people with C. Diff, the benefits outweigh the risk.
 
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