Amsterdam-Soon after Max Nieuwdorp started his residency at the internal medicine department of the Academic Medical Center (AMC) here in 2006, he was confronted with a sad case: an 81-year-old woman hospitalized for a complication after a urinary tract infection who seemed unlikely to survive. She had bed sores and high fevers and was unable to eat. After antibiotics had wiped out her colon's microbial population, an opportunistic bacterium called Clostrid-ium difficile had taken over, causing terrible diarrhea and bowel inflammation.
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