The medical profession has made a tacit admission that antibiotics could cause candida overgrowth.

A recent issue of The Lancet which examined 24 elderly patients who'd developed diarrhoea while receiving antibiotic treatment, found no evidence of the clostridium difficile infection, which is usually blamed for the problem.

Instead, seven of the patients were found to have evidence of candida gut overgrowth. After five received nystatin therapy, their diarrhoea ended, although they continued with the antibiotic treatment, and their fungal stool counts returned to normal in a week.

Even the Lancet was willing to make the link between candida overgrowth in antibiotic induced diarrhoea.

Meanwhile, a new test being used for cancer patients to detect invasive candidiasis could eventually be used to detect candida on all patients.

This latest test finds high concentrations of a candida antibody in tissues using a device called a "double sandwich lipsomal immunoassay for candida enolase" in sequentially collected blood samples.

The test was studied in a trial of 170 at high risk for systemic candidiasis, and found to be accurate in cases of deep tissue candidiasis.

The test might help to prove that candida is not all in your head.