Using someone else’s poo has an average success rate about 90% treating clostridium difficile, the robust but very nasty gut bacteria left after the modern antibiotic onslaught, and has been implicated in diseases such as autism and being investigated in relation to Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and Parkinson’s Disease, among others. Just having the overgrowth itself has been implicated in 14,000 deaths a year in the US
The ABC’s Lateline featured Professor Tom Borody who has been championing the treatment, known as faecal microbiota transplantation (FMT), for 25 years. They also quote the CSIRO’s Dr David Topping “I think we’re on the edge of something extraordinary. The attention has switched entirely to the large bowel bacterial population which we now know is absolutely critical to human health”
The process takes a number of weeks, starting with some dramatic Antibiotics to help bring overgrowths, including the clostridia, under control, and then repeated daily introduction of a screened donor sample, by colonoscopy, enema or nasojejunal tube
If you have spent much time around our centre, you will know how seriously we regard bowel health. We are excited about the concept of Faecal transplants, but have some thoughts on how fungal, and yeast overgrowths, as well as the bacterial overgrowths could be better targeted. Also we are surprised that the transplant donors aren’t selected on the basis of how much better their bowel balance is, rather than just being non symptomatic of the issues the receiver of the transplant is being treated for.
At $15,000 for treatment, people will be wanting some strong reassurance of its effectiveness. We are hopeful, watch this space.
