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Updated: Sep 23, 2025

A Protocol to Characterize the Morphological Changes of Clostridium difficile in Response to Antibiotic Treatment
Published on: May 25, 2017
Probiotics: insights and new opportunities for Clostridioides difficile intervention
Rusha Pal1, Ahmad I M Athamneh2, Riddhi Deshpande3
1Department of Biomedical Sciences and Pathobiology, Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA, USA.
Abstract:
Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI) is a life-threatening disease caused by the Gram-positive, opportunistic intestinal pathogen C. difficile. Despite the availability of antimicrobial drugs to treat CDI, such as vancomycin, metronidazole, and fidaxomicin, recurrence of infection remains a significant clinical challenge. The use of live commensal microorganisms, or probiotics, is one of the most investigated non-antibiotic therapeutic options to balance gastrointestinal (GI) microbiota and subsequently tackle dysbiosis. In this review, we will discuss major commensal probiotic strains that have the potential to prevent and/or treat CDI and its recurrence, reassess the efficacy of probiotics supplementation as a CDI intervention, delve into lessons learned from probiotic modulation of the immune system, explore avenues like genome-scale metabolic network reconstructions, genome sequencing, and multi-omics to identify novel strains and understand their functionality, and discuss the current regulatory framework, challenges, and future directions.
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