MicrobeWorld

This is Cliff. He’s a two-year-old beagle who could become hospitals’ newest, cutest weapon against infections by the bacterium Clostridium difficille. Hospitals around the world are rife with contagious C. diff infections, which kill thousands and sicken many more every year, raising health care costs, increasing the length of hospital stays, and, most tragically, costing lives. Cliff’s highly sensitive nose, though, allows him to sniff out traces of the bacteria in patients’ stool samples faster than traditional lab techniques can.