The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases awarded Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital, both based in Houston, a $7.5 million grant to further efforts to combat Clostridium difficile infections.
The five-year grant will support researchers in studying the gut microbiome to understand the susceptibility to C. diff infection with a focus on how antibiotics affect the intestinal ecosystem. The project's goal is to discover an intestinal ecosystem that may predict treatment failure in patients with C. diff. The project will also include infants who are not susceptible to this pathogen.
"C. diff is a disorder of microbial ecology," said James Versalovic, MD, the Milton J. Finegold Professor of Pathology at Baylor, pathologist-in-chief at Texas Children's and director of Texas Children's Microbiome Center. "Some patients are more susceptible to C. diff recurrence following treatment with antibiotics while other patients may struggle with infections due to drug-resistant bacteria, including C. diff. These issues can pose enormous challenges to successfully treating these patients."
The project will include numerous institutions' resources, including the Gulf Coast C. diff Collaborative.
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is a part of the National Institutes of Health.