Dr. Keith Roach writes a medical question-and-answer column weekdays. Dear Dr. Roach: In December, I developed an abscess in my jaw from food getting caught in my tooth. I went to see a dentist who ...

Dear Dr. Roach: I have an immunoglobulin A (IgA) deficiency and have had to take many antibiotics over the years. But I have never contracted Clostridioides difficile (C. diff) until I took ...

People who take certain popular over-the-counter drugs to fight heartburn may be more likely to experience recurrent infections of a common but deadly “superbug,” a new study says. Researchers found ...

The pathogen C. diff -- the most common cause of health care-associated infectious diarrhea -- can use a compound that kills the human gut's resident microbes to survive and grow, giving it a ...

The risk of getting a deadly, treatment-resistant infection in a hospital or nursing home is dropping for the first time in decades, thanks to new guidelines on antibiotic use and stricter cleaning ...

Nearly half a million people in the United States suffer from an intestinal infection called Clostridium difficile each year. Approximately half of those individuals become sick enough to require ...

Ten years after an outbreak of Clostridium difficile killed as many as 2000 people in Quebec, the diarrhea-causing bacterium is infecting fewer people in Canadian hospitals, though it remains a major ...

In theory, clostridium difficile (aka C. diff) does not seem like a tough problem to solve. Yes, it’s a deadly bacterial infection that sickens almost a half-million people and contributes to some ...

Five insights from the report, written by Clayton Dalton, MD, a resident physician at Boston-based Massachusetts General Hospital: 1. In addition to antibiotic use being a risk factor for C. diff, ...

Matthew Munneke, left, and Eric Skaar, PhD, MPH, use anaerobic chambers to study bacteria like C. diff that die in the presence of oxygen. The pathogen C. diff — the most common cause of health ...