Participants in the BEETHOVEN study will be randomized to receive two C. difficile vaccine doses six months apart, or a placebo, to learn if an investigational vaccine is safe and can help prevent C. difficile infection in people age 65 and older.

“These antibodies hold significant promise to be used in people who are at risk of measles, but who cannot respond to the measles vaccine due to their weakened immune systems," said James Crowe Jr., MD, whose research team isolated the human monoclonal antibodies.

Gaddy is a leading researcher in bacterial pathogenesis, innate immunity and reproductive immunology.

Treatment options are limited for the more than 500,000 people in the U.S. who are diagnosed annually with C. diff infections, but researchers are working on potential vaccines, therapeutic antibodies and — most recently — nanobodies, to prevent and treat C. diff infections.

New study represents a major step forward for vaccine development for C. diff, the leading cause of health care- and antibiotic-associated infection.

There currently are no approved treatments or vaccines to protect against the infection, which can cause internal bleeding, organ failure, and in roughly 50% of cases, death.

The public health burden of long COVID is estimated to be the largest seen from an emerging disease in the past century, yet there remain no effective interventions.