[url=http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/57795/#comments#ixzz14qzdFuSv]Same poop different gut[/url] – The Scientist – Magazine of the Life Sciences
Same poop different gut
Most people might find the idea of having another person’s feces injected into their intestine hard to stomach but for those with intractable gastrointestinal problems another person’s bodily waste is all that’s standing between a lifetime of severe illness and a full recovery.
This therapy — known as fecal transplants bacteriotherapy or human probiotic infusions — has taken to the limelight in recent years not only because its gross factor makes for great headlines but in great part because of the growing epidemic of a particularly toxic strain of [i]Clostridium difficile[/i] that has been plaguing hospitals across the U.S. for the past decade and affecting more than a quarter of a million Americans per year.
By producing sturdy spores that can linger in the intestinal tract even after repeated antibiotic treatment [i]C. difficile [/i]can continually give rise to new toxin-producing colonies that wreak havoc on the colon. But these colonies prove no match for fecal transplants which boast a cure rate of up to 95 percent.
At the heart of these transplants are the trillions of microbes that inhabit the gut and have a profound impact on the host’s biology — for better or worse. As Australian gastroenterologist Thomas Borody jokingly puts it “we are 10 percent human 90 percent poo.”
Borody did his first fecal transplant back in the mid 1980s.
[b]He collected stool from the woman’s brother and after screening it for known pathogens he stuck it in a blender added some brine and filtered it to get rid of any undigested material.
The stool now turned into slush was administered to the patient — who had her gastrointestinal tract previously flushed — via two enemas over the course of two days.[/b]
It’s relatively simple relatively inexpensive and it’s very rapid in its actions.
Other disorders that seem to respond to this method are [b]inflammatory bowel diseases[/b]
[b]obesity[/b][b]metabolic syndrome[/b] a catch-all disorder that has a high risk of developing into [b]diabetes[/b] [b]colitis[/b] [b]chronic fatigue syndrome[/b] [b]acne[/b] and [b]multiple sclerosis[/b] [b]Parkinson’s[/b].
[Many autistic children also experience gastrointestinal and bowel complaints such as greasy stools constipation or diarrhoea. They often have an imbalance in gut flora. [i]Asperger Services Australia[/i] – Could this approach also help them?]
Thomas Brody is director of the [b][url=http://www.cdd.com.au/index.html]Centre for Digestive Diseases[/url] in New South Wales[/b].
This method has opened the door to a better understanding of a multitude of diseases.