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Fecal Transplants Can Treat Severe Infection

 

Clinical courses

Fecal matter transplants are more successful in treating Clostridium difficile infections than previously thought, new research has found. The research shows that healthy changes to a patient's microbiome are sustained for up to 21 weeks after transplant, and has implications for the regulation of the treatment.

Clostridium difficile infections are a growing problem, leading to recurrent cases of diarrhoea and severe abdominal pain, with thousands of fatalities worldwide every year The infection is thought to work by overrunning the intestinal microbiome- the ecosystem of microorganisms that maintain a healthy intestine, researchers said.

Fecal microbiota transplantation was developed as a method of treating C difficile infection, and is particularly successful in patients who suffer repeat infections. Fecal matter is collected from a donor, purified, mixed with a saline solution and placed in a patient, usually by colonoscopy.

Previous research has shown that the fecal microbiot of patients resembles that of the donor, but not much is known about the short and long term stability of fecal microbiota transplanted into recipients. In new research, Michael Sadowsky and colleagues at the University of Minnesota collected fecal samples from four patients before and after their fecal transplants.

Three patients received freshly prepared microbiota from fecal matter and one patient received fecal microbiota that had previously been frozen. All received fecal microbiota from the same pre-qualified donor. The team compared the pre- and posttransplant fecal microbial communities from the four patients, as well as from 10 additional patients with recurring C difficile infections, to the sequences of normal subjects described in the Human Microbiome Project.


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