First used
in the 1950s, the fecal transplant has steadily gained street-cred since its introduction
as a potential cure to the fierce bacterial infection caused by Clostridium
difficile.
C. difficile
is a gastrointestinal illness that causes around 14,000 deaths in the US every
year.
A team at
Massachusetts General Hospital recently published a study in JAMA highlighting
a new method of storage for fecal transplants, essentially turning them into a
frozen pill that can last for up to 250 days.
The basic
idea of a fecal transplant is this: Healthy feces contain a mix of good bacteria
that, when reintroduced back into the body, reequips the intestine to fight the
C. difficile infection and allow the gut to function properly.
In the past,
fecal transplant administration seemed like a fairly uncomfortable procedure —
invasive at one of two ends. To get the necessary bacteria into the gut,
patients could endure either a tube that went into their nose and down to their
digestive tract, or an enema. Now, researchers at Massachusetts General
Hospital in Boston have encapsulated the essential fecal material and tested
this “poo pill” in a small study of 20 people.
The 20 patients ranged in age from 11 to 89 years old and each had suffered repeated cases of C. Difficile infection. Over the course of two days, each patient ingested 30 frozen capsules, 15 each day, and in 14 out of 20 patients, the infection was eliminated. In the remaining patients, the infection went away after a second round of 30 pills.
The 20 patients ranged in age from 11 to 89 years old and each had suffered repeated cases of C. Difficile infection. Over the course of two days, each patient ingested 30 frozen capsules, 15 each day, and in 14 out of 20 patients, the infection was eliminated. In the remaining patients, the infection went away after a second round of 30 pills.
But the
purpose of the pill wasn’t just to ease treatment protocol. It also allowed
researchers to test ways to store the treatment for convenient use in the
future. They found that freezing the pill to give to later patients was a
viable option, making fecal transplants a simpler and safer medical tool.
Now,
researchers are working towards a larger study with the frozen poo pills and
hope to replicate the success they saw in the preliminary 20 patients.
An edible
bacterial transplant is still unappetizing, but benefits seem to vastly
outweigh the gross-factor. I just don’t, for the life of me, understand why
they chose to store the fecal material in clear capsules. It looks exactly like
how it sounds—like a frozen poo pill.