• Posted April 9, 2026

This Treatment Can Improve Your Odds Of Surviving C. Diff Infection

Prompt treatment with a fecal transplant can improve survival odds of people with a life-threatening C. difficile infection, a new study says.

But doctors need to act fast, highlighting the need for hospitals to maintain a bank for fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT), researchers reported April 6 in the journal Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology.

“The window for the FMT intervention is very narrow because these patients are generally extremely sick,” said lead researcher Dr. Alexander Khoruts, director of the the University of Minnesota Medical School’s Microbiota Therapeutics Program. 

“Therefore, the FMT formulation needs to be easily accessible,” Khoruts said in a news release. “We are in a unique position at the university because we have a facility in our institution where our FMT products are manufactured in accordance with pharmaceutical standards, and treatment units are always on hand in our cryobank.”

Clostridioides difficile (C. difficile or C. diff) is an opportunistic bacteria that causes severe diarrhea and colitis, an inflammation of the colon, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

C. diff infections typically occur after a person’s natural gut bacteria has been wiped out by antibiotics, which allows the harmful bacteria to move in and occupy the gut. 

People are up to 10 times more likely to become infected with C. diff while on an antibiotic or within three months afterward, the CDC says.

About 15,000 people a year die from C. diff infections in the United States, researchers said in background notes.

For the new study, researchers tested a standardized fecal transplant protocol with 18 critically ill C. diff patients with an average age of 74.

Fecal transplant involves placing gut bacteria from a healthy donor into the GI system of a sick person. The idea is that the healthy bacteria will restore balance to the patient’s gut microbiome.

All of the patients were deteriorating despite at least two days spent on intensive antibiotics, and most were too unstable for colon surgery, researchers said.

Doctors performed the fecal transplant through a colonoscopy, delivering healthy bacteria into the patients’ guts.

In all, 4 of the 14 patients died within a month of their fecal transplant, researchers reported. After one year, 12 of the 18 patients remained alive.

The transplants were associated with a decrease in patients’ inflammation, as measured by C-reactive protein and white blood cell counts, researchers said.

Researchers also found that antibiotics should not be held off for too long following a fecal transplant.

Under the protocol, antibiotics were held for 24 hours prior to transplant and resumed about three days later.

Withholding antibiotics for more than four days following fecal transplant risks a resurgence of C. difficile in these patients, researchers said.

Eight of the 18 patients needed more than one fecal transplant, researchers said.

More research is needed with larger groups of patients to fully validate fecal transplant as a treatment option for C. diff infection, researchers said.

More information

Drugs.com has more on C. difficile.

SOURCE: University of Minnesota, news release, April 6, 2026