Scientists have recently discovered that a form of sugar called trehalose could be partly to blame for the rapid emergence around the turn of the millennium of certain epidemic-associated strains of the gut bacterium Clostridium difficile. The research, published in Nature and led by Baylor College of Medicine microbiologist Robert Britton, PhD, suggests that these strains have a unique ability to grow on low amounts of the sugar, which entered the North American and European food systems around the same time as C difficile outbreaks in these regions.