How long for improvement on vanco?

geez, i didn't think you could still get c diff, liz!! that bites!

i've only been on oral vanco before and it took about a day to kick in both times. i went from about 25 bm's a day and held steady at 4 bm's for a while. the 1.5 months on it worked for me last time. i swear i stockpile the stuff. have a few boxes in my cupboard right now actually!

liz, my gi said he has patients on vanco indefinitely for their symptoms. he is pretty unconventional i've noticed haha he wrote me the script for 6 months but there was no way i wanted to stay on it that long!

oh yeah, thanks liz!! just had a dexa scan. i'm kind of terrified for the results : /

Crazy how c. diff doesn't seem to differentiate between those who don't have colons and those who do. Bacteria that were once present in the colon will proliferate in the small intestine to compensate and help facilitate digestion, so it is theoretically possible. Amazing how the body works this way.

The data from uptodate shows that the mean treatment time is somewhere around 10-14 days for non-severe cases. It has a 1 in 4 chance of recurring so one must take extra precautions.

When I took antibiotics, I wasn't informed of the high c. diff risk and the strong chance of it coming back after treatment. My advice would be to stay on saccharomyces boulardii permanently as a prophylactic measure.

The other piece of advice I would give is to be vary of future antibiotics treatments. It is highly likely that it caused c. diff in the first place if you did not pick it up at a hospital.

That's doubly interesting. The recent influx of c. diff threads were the result of antibiotics. I believe the latent c. diff theory being triggered by environmental factors.

Depending on where you live, vitamin D deficiency might have played some role. Over here in the Northern Hemisphere, the rates are higher because of the winter.

Either way, hope you get well VERY soon. C. diff is one of my greatest fears and would not wish it on anyone.

bananagirl said...
stealth, do you know that c diff is in all babies when they are born but most grow up without it?? i was talking to my GI about it last week and how all my friends/cousins are having babies. he said not to hold them and be very cautious of even going over their house because of all the diapers babies go through... especially because of my c diff history. kind of sucks but i really don't want to risk it again!!

Very interesting. Remind me to never get FTs from babies, which is something people have admittedly done in the past. :X

The following study mentions that it's present in at least 1 in 3 infants.

In the study, which involved following 42 children from birth to 1 ½ or 3 years, the investigators found that C. difficile strains persisted for more than six months in roughly one third of such infants. A majority of the persistant colonizations belonged to either of two toxigenic ribotypes which both have commonly been isolated from adult and elderly people with C. difficile toxin-mediated disease in Sweden and in other countries.

Sorry to hear you have c-diff. I have been in the fight with c-diff and a major crohns flare for the past 5-6 weeks. I was on Vanc 125 mg four times a day for two weeks but symptoms remained so we went to the taper method about 4 weeks ago. I am finally starting to get some relief although I am still miserable. I restarted Cimzia a week ago because my fecal calprotectin numbers were literally off the charts- above 1250. I am hoping and praying I beat this. I got the C-diff while on cipro.

My GI said there is not much proof that the 250 dose of Vanc is any more effective than the 125 which is why I am on the 125 dose.

If I am still c-diff positive after my taper, I have another GI who is willing to do Fecal transplant which can be done if you fail antibiotics.

I take 4 Florastor per day and one Align.

Take care!

Post Edited (pmedic) : 2/13/2014 3:19:26 PM (GMT-7)

My friend is an icu nurse and she told me c diff is becoming more and more resistant to the antibiotics. My mother in law died from complications of c diff. She was receiving chemo at the time....must have picked it up in the hospital. Her body was too weak to fight it. I get angry just at the mention of the word. That scares the heck out of me that we can still get it with a j pouch. Crazy. Hope the vanco knocks it out fast.