F.D.A. Approves Drug to Treat Hospital Scourge

By ANDREW POLLACK
NYT

As a young infectious disease researcher in 1971, Dr. Sherwood L. Gorbach received an urgent call for help from a drug company. Some patients treated with the company’s antibiotic in New Zealand had developed severe cases of diarrhea and bowel inflammation, and some had died.

Dr. Gorbach ended up devoting much of his career to tracking down the cause of that outbreak and pursuing treatments. On Friday, 40 years after he began his quest, the Food and Drug Administration approved a drug he helped develop.

The drug, called Dificid, is the first new medicine in 25 years approved to treat diarrhea caused by Clostridium difficile, a nasty and persistent bacterium that one study suggests may have surpassed the better known MRSA as the leading hospital-acquired infection.

In clinical trials, Dificid, also known as fidaxomicin, proved better than the only approved drug in keeping patients free of symptoms 25 days after the end of treatment. The new drug was developed by Optimer Pharmaceuticals, where Dr. Gorbach, now 76, is the chief scientific officer.

(More here.)