Gut Microbiota and New Microbiome-Targeted Drugs for Clostridioides difficile Infections.

Abstract

Clostridioides difficile is a major causative pathogen for antibiotic-associated diarrhea and C. difficile infections (CDIs) may lead to life-threatening diseases in clinical settings. Most of the risk factors for the incidence of CDIs, i.e., antibiotic use, treatment by proton pump inhibitors, old age, and hospitalization, are associated with dysbiosis of gut microbiota and associated metabolites and, consequently, treatment options for CDIs include normalizing the composition of the intestinal microbiome. In this review, with an introduction to the CDI and its global epidemiology, CDI-associated traits of the gut microbiome and its metabolites were reviewed, and microbiome-targeting treatment options were introduced, which was approved recently as a new drug by the United States Food and Drug Administration (U.S. FDA), rather than a medical practice.