C-diff Vaccine

scifigal2k posted this on the Crohn's board:

"I can't remember if anyone else has posted about this, but I thought it was pretty exciting. It's a vaccine for c. diff. and they've started clinical trials on people! Wouldn't this be so awesome?"

www.ksl.com/index.php?sid=36398843&nid=960

Hey Dikid, this is actually just like a tetanus shot. Which is also a Clostridium bacteria.

So the vaccine is really against the specific toxins produced by c-diff that are what causes all the problems in c-diff infection and not Clostridium bacteria in general. So upon vaccination the the immune system mounts an immune response against the toxins and builds antibodies to them - so the immune system 'learns'. Then, in the future if one comes down with c-diff that starts releasing toxins the body does not have to prime itself. The immune system (b-cells) just start pumping out antibodies immediately which bind to the toxins and inactivate them. This prevents the symptoms. Well if the vaccine works that is! ha.

Many vaccines work this same way to neutralize toxins that they excrete. So the vaccine is really slightly altered versions of the two c-diff toxins.

This is definitely something to be excited about, as C Difficile is such a difficult illness to eradicate, and especially worse I think for someone battling UC.