AAD - Antibiotic Associated Diarrhea

If you think antibiotics are all cure, think again. It can cause serious diarrhea too.

THE most serious cause of antibiotic-associated diarrhea (AAD) is Clostridium difficile; rod-shaped bacteria that compete with gut bacteria, or what remain of them, after recently wiped out by broad-spectrum antibiotics. These antibiotics include clindamycin, a drug for respiratory tract infections and skin and soft tissues infection as well.

A few people have Difficile residing normally in their gut. Others got it as patients in a health facility (e.g. hospital, nursing home). But as its population explodes, it results in the overproduction of toxins. They overrun the gut, and cause a painful diarrhea that can become severe.

The specie is nosocomial, known to cause diarrhea in hospitals worldwide. It developed clindamycin-resistant strains detected in outbreaks in New York, Arizona, Florida and Massachusetts from 1989 to 1992. Fluroquinolone-resistant strains appeared in North America in 2005.

AAD can lead to pseudomembranous colitis, a severe inflammation of the colon (large intestine) where the colon lining bleeds. Symptoms include abdominal cramps, bloody stools, fever, urge to defecate, and watery diarrhea (usually five to 10 times a day).

The three most common antibiotics associated with this disease in children are... [READ MORE]

This article appears in SunStar Cebu newspaper on 23 May 2012.

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