Bend clinical trial targets deadly ‘super-bug’

C-Diff, or Clostridium Defficile, is now the most common cause of infections associated with health care in the U.S. Bend Memorial Clinic is part of an effort trying to change that.

“The germ was not identified until 1978,” Dr. Jon Lutz, the head clinical trial investigator at BMC, said Thursday.

It lives in the human gut, and is spread from person to person through oral-fecal ingestion. It’s a spore that can cause severe infection. Since it was discovered, deaths have steadily increased.

“There is not a vaccine against C-Diff,” but that’s the goal of the clinical trials, said Christine Reed, clinical research coordinator at BMC.

The Oregon Public Health Division found that in 2011, more than 80,000 people were infected in hospitals — and 5 to 10 percent of those patients died.

“I’ve seen a handful of people die from it,” Lutz said.

Contracting C-Diff can extend hospital stays by an average of three days. It can also cost a person thousands of dollars, and it most commonly affects the elderly.

“The mortality rate for Deschutes County is, I believe, 3 percent,” Lutz said. “So it’s not a trivial infection.”

The global pharmaceutical company, Sanofi Pasteur, is sponsoring the clinical trial.

“This could be huge,” Reed said.

The trial will test 15,000 people nationwide. The vaccine being tested uses altered toxins that do not cause illness. Instead, they boost the immune system, the idea being it will neutralize the toxins that come from C-Diff.

People 50 years and older can qualify for the trial, as well as those who have been hospitalized twice for at least 24 hours in the past year.

If the trial gets positive results, it could be groundbreaking.

“I’m all for being a part of the team that creates a safe and effective vaccine against this serious intestinal infection,” Lutz said.

Call 877-693-8338 to find out more.