Subject:

Vancomycin

 

Question:

My GI has been experimenting with vancomycin on his IBD patients. He has had some remarkable success giving vanco to patients who were headed for surgery because standard IBD meds were not helping them. One of his patients was "cured" completely. He doesn't know why. This is a very controversial treatment and not one other GI at Mt. Sinai is prescribing vanco in that way. I know that Marla, whose doc worked out of  the same office as mine, refused to let her try it. My doc prescribed 2 weeks of vancomycin for me, and then when I was almost finished it I practically begged him to give me another prescription. He let me take it for 2 more weeks and was amazed at how quickly my bowel healed. Of course, I was following the SCD too, at the time, and eating lots of yogurt. I wish he would collect dietary information from his patients who take the vanco. I bet the patients who do well on it have some things in common.

 

Elaine writes:

Fifteen years ago in the Dept. of Anatomy at Univ. of Western Ontario I spent a year working on UC.  It was well known then that vancomycin and/or clindamycin were successfully used for Clostridium difficile colitis caused by antibotics.  Of course vancomysin is  an antibiotic .  I had no idea it was so controversial.  On page l5l of BTVC, I have a reference on   C. difficile.  On page l53 (references)  ref. 38 is a 1976 Workshop on clindamycin colitis with Dr. Present being one of two editors.  If I remember correctly, clindamycin and vancomycin have some kind of relationship.  I just can't recall if clindamycin causes colitis and it is cured by vancomycin.  But the point is that it has been worked on in the research community for decades.