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Gut Bacteria Cocktail May End Need for Fecal Transplants
sciencehabit writes "A tonic of gut microbes may be the secret recipe for treating a common hospital scourge. Researchers have pinpointed the exact mix of microbes required to cure mice of chronic infection by Clostridium difficile. The hard-to-treat bacterium infects alomst 336,000 in the US each year and causes bloating, pain, & diarrhea. A similar bacterial cocktail may be able to replace the current controversial treatment involving the intake of a healthy person's fecal matter to restore the right balance of microbes in the gut."
I use it regularly.
Because you don't have to pay big pharma for poo?
I'd never heard of this before, and I still wish I hadn't.
If I'm unfortunate to get this illness, please don't tell me the cure.
remember seeing a guy that had very extreme astma to the point of being more or less disabled, he learned that some specific intestine worm
sometimes had a positive effect by giving the immunes system something else to work on, or something like that
the worm lives in the intestine and gets into the body through the skin of the feet, see traveled africa stepping in latrines ...
he is now almost no astma symptoms and harvest worms from his own poo, for himself and to sell on the internet
Friday night entertainment
Gently reply
This kind of treatment has been tested before and is an exciting possibility, but there have been failures in the past. Also, this is nothing like the yogurt cultures you know.
...... and idiots rule the world....
To get an idea of how gut bacteria are that important: we are made of about 10e13 human cells, and we contain 10e14 gut bacterial, for about 2 kg of mass. Let a subset of the gut bacteria population become hostile pathogens, and you see that we can easily be outnumbered by attackers.
Science is just starting to discover how the body as an ecosystem functions. We still have a lot of progress to make from wiping out all bacteria and relying on broad-spectrum antibodies.
The amazing thing about the bacterial ecosystem is how even different parts of your skin can be colonized by completely different types of bacteria, even just a few inches apart. There are symbiotic relationships just among the bacteria, and other bacteria which are several degrees removed from directly relying on our host bodies. It's a fascinating area of study, but one which is difficult, because it's impossible to isolate and study the bugs individually.
This one's better than another crappy MS slashvertisement though...
In regards to why anyone would need a shit transplant, I willfully remain ignorant. According to legend, there's a version of fecal transplant called a Happy Meal, which comes with free bread and sauce and a nice bag with some plastic item or something in it. It's said to be safe for children, but I'm no expert.
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
he can't explain why he craves his own shit but now, he knows.
We had a son that was born at 23 weeks/0 days. Yea, that is 4 months premature. At this time (he turns 4 in December) the biggest problem he has is chronic issues with his gut. The odds are that he never got the correct mix of bacteria in his gut early on, because he was in a sterile environment when his body should have been getting mama milk and the crap that goes along with it. ;)
This is good.
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
Kefir is even better, but hard to monetize so it's less common. Get some, keep a large jar and replenish with milk as required.
It didn't cross your mind that if you were actually correct, the researcher - who is presumably at least reasonably competent inside the field in which they are working - would have been culturing the microbes from yoghurt or kefir?
Right now, the evidence provided means the 'yoghurt or kefir are just as good' claim carries as much weight as the claim that homeopathic vaccines are as effective as real vaccines.
Cat got your tongue? (something important seems to be missing from your comment ... like the body or the subject!)
Do they call it a brain transplant?
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
Sh1t that matters.
Hell, so it really is an actual treatment. I would never have surmised it. Pardon the crassness in the first sentence of my original comment, but it seemed ludicrous at first. Inadvertent education, ..who'd a thunk it.
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
News for Turds
Stuff that Splatters
this had to be green lighted at dinner time? Seriously.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Perhaps: "shit that splatters?"
Come on, somebody had to say it!
But there ain't no way Jamie Lee Curtis is going to convince me to eat shit... I don't care how regular it makes me, UUuuugggghhhh!
Like I told my donor, "Get lost, buddy, I don't need your shit any more".
Try the veal.
This research doesn't show the only way or all the ways your gut flora can be restored after (treating) a C dif infection. It describes one way and proves its claim without ruling any other treatments out. Put another way, this research does not disprove the effectiveness of any rememdies not explicitly covered and should not be assumed to evaluate their individual effectivenesses.
The key idea is intentionally augmenting the gut's flora with probiotics so that restoration of beneficial native flora can occur more rapidly. The paper points to specific strains which are required to attain the effectiveness of a fecal transfer. L bacillus and acidophilus may not cure your C dif infection or instantly restore homeostasis, but they'll significantly help restore your ability to properly receive nutrients from digested food. While more palatable than eating poo, they're simply not as efffective because they don't represent all the necessary flora. They are, however, still effective and recommended as treatments.
While theirs was not an accurate or well supported claim, please recognize that the comment you responded to contained more truth than your dissmissively out of hand rebuttal. Also, don't try to appeal to authority when there is evidence against your assertion that probiotics are equivalent to homeopathy.
Yoghurt efficiency is not homeopathic lie.
From the "Québec Nationnalle health agency", an official document (PDF, French), page 36.
.
(Google traduction)"On primary prevention, in a recent double-blind presented American College of Gastroenterology where 44 patients who had a yogurt enriched lactobacilli were compared with 45 patients with placebo, the incidence of diarrhea was significantly lower in the group with probiotic (p = 0.01). However, in view specifically of diarrhea associated with Clostridium difficile, the difference between the groups was less significant (1 patient in the probiotic group vs 7 in the placebo group had an episode of CDAD, p = 0.058)."
why bother with feces when you've got a good excuse to shoot an acidic coffee enema up your rectum? i hear its a better high than meth...
So yoghurt works in 14% of cases. I mean, it's better than nothing, but still, a little lame. You are right, though, it is a homeopathic remedy that "works". However, I wouldn't want to spend weeks shitting myself blind to find out I'm like most people and it didn't work.
Yep, this whole story is a big poop thread.
OK, the Republicans warned me about Obamacare, but seriously?
A researcher once tried to test me. I ate his shit with some fava beans and a nice gut bacteria cocktail... (slurpslurp)
a) it will be expensive
b) it will be prescribed to considerably more than 336,000 people a year
c) profit!
Eating yogurt is not a homeopathic remedy. Look up what homeopathic means.
Eating yogurt is a simple treatment, and as the grandparent's quote indicates it is significantly effective at reducing the incidence of diarrhea in cases of gut flora loss (due to antibiotics usually). However, it is significantly less effective when the problem is specifically c.difficile overgrowth.
So if you're taking antibiotics, get a probiotic yogurt, it is likely to help. If you do end up with c. diff, you may need another type of treatment.
I always thought they were optional...
Couple of notes here. This is purely anecdotal so don't take it as the Gospel. I was on IV antibiotics not too long ago followed by oral antibiotic for a condition called Diverticulitis.
Anyways, while I was on the antibiotic, I wasn't to have milk or milk based foods (yogurt, ice cream so on). I was told it would reduce the effectiveness of the antibiotic and the treatment wouldn't work. After I finished the oral antibiotics, I was instructed to drink at least 2 ounces of kefir at least twice a day by my doctor in order to replenish the "good" bacteria in the gut. I imagine this is the gut flora being talked about.
I guess what I'm getting at is, check with your doc first if you are going to do something like this. You might need to wait until your off the antibiotic first.
read this as "Gut Bacteria Cocktail May End Need for Facial Transplants"? I was a little excited.
Diverticulitis is caused when the gut shrinks, causing little pockets where infection can occur. The best solution to the condition is to increase fiber intake, thus stretching the gut and smoothing out the pockets. A couple of bran muffins a day, along with plenty of liquid, will solve the problem and prevent it in the first place.
There are some useful bacteria in yoghurt and the like, but they do not contain the entire range of bacteria in a healthy gut (thankfully, or that yoghurt would be nasty).
And who was literally released from a birthday week in hospital the other day there, this treatment has me excited for treating it as well.
I had always wondered why it wasn't being tried on a wide-scale to see what it would work like, but then I remembered the gut-treatment side of the medical industry is F"£&*}@ MASSIVE so nobody wants to lose it if a possible cure works.
Anti-biotics have also helped considerably, but that is only one part of the problem and solution. (since they can equally cause it, as do probiotics, anything major with the gut in a short time-scale really, this is how mines came about, change from weak diet to super diet in a few months, bam, pooping roses)
Crohns and other things in essence is the immune system just plain not liking some of those guys at the party and actually throwing a full-on fit mid-party, so trying to get them thrown out by everyone else may just work. But in most cases, Crohn just looks like a party pooper and is ignored. Poor guy.
In other news, must remember not to drink that slightly orange liquid, that ain't orange juice. That ain't even stale orange juice.
Likely won't work and our ideas on Crohns and gut immunology are far less than what we thought they were. But still.
You'd now just have to drink a solution containing the bacteria from someone's shit.
Wasn't some fucked up fantasy - it was a medical documentary!
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_exclusion_principle
And it has been used medically in treatments for ages, I actually fail to see what is really that new with this(especially since the mouse microbiota is so fundamentally diffent from the human's), albeit it interesting.
In this context it means that introducing a new bacteria to the gut microbiota that consumes a certain resource, starves other bacteria that lives on that resource.
It is very useful, as literally hundreds of studies show.
- begin rant
However, as the research and pharmaceutical world works now, studies has, for no actual reason beyond prestige, politics and money, to be huge and expensive to matter.
Even when outcomes are clear and many others repeat the results, all the credit goes to the first huge one.
Credit aside, this means that it is very difficult to develop new treatment regimens. Especially for smaller companies and for uncommon illnesses where the number of study participants simply cannot be that high, or with treatments that you just can't not give, as when patients are severily ill. In the last case, it is unethical to have a non-treated group to compare with.
Yet it is extremely uncommon that treatments are approved generally no matter ho obvious the outcomes are. I has to be blinded, randomized and so on regardless, completely disregarding patient health or simply...math.
Double-blinded randomized trials add no actual statistical certainty over repeated non-blinded multicenter studies if outcomes are very obvious.
RTs value are when outcomes are less clear, there is a large potential placebo effekt and there the financier of the study is a pharmaceutical company and one of the few researching a specific substances.
Simply put, sufferers of severe illnesses have a really har time getting their research going anywhere.
- end rant
IANAMPBIAATR/W(I am not a medical professional, but I am able to read/write).
Baboons are cute.
So you just spent three sentences claiming yogurt will cure c.difficile, arguing the parents point is incorrect.
Then your final sentence claims yogurt will NOT cure c.difficile, echoing exactly the parents point.
Your first three sentences also link in with the parent being wrong as you claim homeopathic remedies are somehow scientific and do work, since that was that posts entire point...
Also no one at all in this thread claimed yogurt was homeopathic, that was just something you made up (likely on purpose) to try and argue against it.
What _exactly_ are you trying to say again? (Other than everything, and contradicting everythings to boot?)
Just doing this to clear a bad mod. Sorry... it's a shitty situation.
Everything I've ever learned the hard way was based on a statistically invalid sample.
You're shitting me?!
Because you can - or because you should?
Friday night entertainment
For ze Germans.
All what's needed is the patient making their own, home-made goat kefir (if they're not terribly allergic to dairy -- although even dairy allergies are a para-symptom of wheat allergy in reality). Kefir's 43 different bacteria and yeasts can kill CDiff, and it's being shown to do so in research (Minnesota university professor/doctor tried it recently too). But the kefir must be home-made (bottled ones don't include the full spectrum of bacteria/yeasts because of bottling regulations regarding alcohol the yeasts create), it must be from goat, sheep or buffalo milk (for less casein irritation, as the A2 casein is more compatible with humans), and it must be fermented for 24 hours (to minimize the amount of lactose ingested). Two-three cups a day of kefir (with a few berries in it, maybe with some pine and walnut nuts, also maybe with some raw, unfiltered and local honey too), and CDiff should be back in check within 3-4 days. No need for antibiotics, for pill probiotics, or doctors for that matter.
"The hard-to-treat bacterium infects alomst [sic] 336,000 in the US each year"
336,000 WHAT? Humans? Or mice? Of mice and men. Are they a man or a mouse?
Mice are DIFFERENT to human beings, and this 'research' is a fraud, as is all animal 'research' when supposedly for the benefit of humans.
(Cue morons on Slashdot who have done NO research into the subject, spouting the 'party line' in order to avoid THINKING...)
Diverticulitis is caused when the gut shrinks, causing little pockets where infection can occur. The best solution to the condition is to increase fiber intake, thus stretching the gut and smoothing out the pockets. A couple of bran muffins a day, along with plenty of liquid, will solve the problem and prevent it in the first place.
I think this is sort of right but not exactly. According to most sources (and my books) these pouches (diverticula) occur when the large intestine has to work hard to move the residue of a low-fiber diet along. This excess pressure strains the wall of the large intestine and causes the pouching. The 'itis' part is inflammation when feces get trapped and bacteria proliferate. An unpleasant end result could be peritonitis or perforation and peritonitis - so keep eating your fiber.
This research doesn't show the only way or all the ways your gut flora can be restored after (treating) a C dif infection.
Yes indeed.
Put another way, this research does not disprove the effectiveness of any rememdies not explicitly covered and should not be assumed to evaluate their individual effectivenesses.
Also true.
The key idea is intentionally augmenting the gut's flora with probiotics so that restoration of beneficial native flora can occur more rapidly. The paper points to specific strains which are required to attain the effectiveness of a fecal transfer. L bacillus and acidophilus may not cure your C dif infection or instantly restore homeostasis, but they'll significantly help restore your ability to properly receive nutrients from digested food. While more palatable than eating poo, they're simply not as efffective because they don't represent all the necessary flora. They are, however, still effective and recommended as treatments.
And I still am not disagreeing with you here - and indeed neither does my original post.
While theirs was not an accurate or well supported claim, please recognize that the comment you responded to contained more truth than your dissmissively out of hand rebuttal. Also, don't try to appeal to authority when there is evidence against your assertion that probiotics are equivalent to homeopathy.
And here, you're incorrect. They actually contain a claim, with no supporting evidence.
Yoghurt and Kefir may indeed be good for gut flora, but claiming that Yoghurt and Kefir do the same thing as a fecal transplant, but are not used because it is hard to monetize them, is a long long way from from claiming Yoghurt and Kefir are good for gut flora. In particular, the evidence provided that the Kefir remedy 'does the same thing' as a fecal transplant (i.e. none) makes discounting the work of the researcher - which is implied in saying "x does the same, but there is no money in it" - ridiculous.
So I mostly, but not entirely, agree with you.
Yoghurt efficiency is not homeopathic lie.
I agree, and I didn't say that yoghurt efficiency (did you mean efficacy?) is a homeopathic lie. I said that the evidence provided (meaning by the previous posters) meant that their claim carried as much weight as the claim that homeopathic vaccines are as effective as real vaccines.
Just to make sure I'm very clear (because others also took a different meaning from my post than I intended):
The evidence provided for claim X means that the claim carries as much weight as claim Y.
That doesn't mean X is an example of Y.
Yoghurt and Kefir may indeed be good for gut flora, but claiming that Yoghurt and Kefir do the same thing as a fecal transplant, but are not used because it is hard to monetize them, is a long long way from from claiming Yoghurt and Kefir are good for gut flora.
Reading is one thing, comprehending is another. For the first time, we know what can get rid of this very bad bug in a mammal, without using the previously accepted (and not at all controversial) fecal transplant when other antibiotics fail.
Mouse or not, this gives a target to look for in humans. And assuming all of the ingredients are human-compatible, this should result in a good step towards curing a very painful and debilitating condition.
The principle has been known for a while, but the exact mix that works for this particular bug has not been known. Hopefully you see where the big deal is now. Previous treatments offered certain strains which only succeeded under certain circumstances, most likely when the patient had some of the missing flora.
I won't address the rant, it is a blend of ignorance, well-trodden fact, incomplete understanding, internal inconsistency, and a few others that can't be specified because they are wrapped around other fallacies. If you indeed can read, you should read less mainstream media, and certainly quit reading slashdot comments.
Yogurt and Kefir are similar in the same way chimpanzees and people are similar. "Bacterial dairy product".
Similar process, different result because the bacteria are different.
One post mentioned Kefir has 23 different bacteria strains, which I assume is a very specific recipe, but did not give me enough to ensure I found the right citation.
Yogurt is good for normal antibiotic-related diarrhea. I would assume Kefir would help where Yogurt would not, but I am not going to make my own. Feel free to start your own Kefir anti-diarrhea business and monetize the crap out of it.
If neither works, someone may have found the correct secret herbs and spices to combine together to create a hostile environment for C. difficile, which neither one of these can reliably cure.
Try Yogurt, then try Kefir, then if it hasn't fixed you up, you can be assured by a great many patients who have suffered they would pay almost anything for a cure within hours. Sure greed is involved, but it is worth the value to the patient. If this is not patentable, which it likely is not unless one strain is proprietary, the only greed is reading the research and re-creating it. Then who wins?
Reading comprehension check.
The entire post says that yogurt can help prevent some problems, but not C. difficile. Read it again and see if you disagree.
AC did not claim it is homeopathic. The exact quote is
That comes from a misunderstanding of #41786373 poorly constructed quote "Yoghurt efficiency is not homeopathic lie."
In context of parent quote #41785977
I would assume this should have been something like "Yoghurt efficiency is not along the lines of homeopathic lies, but your analogy is terrible."
Unfortunately, "yoghurt or kefir are just as good" is just as provably false as homeopathy. The probiotic test done by "Québec Nationnalle health agency" was not on curing C. difficile. It was a review of a meta-study which examined giving patients an antibiotic along with a pro-biotic. Sorry for Slashdot apparently translating to UTF-8 but not setting the page encoding properly.
This has absolutely nothing to do with curing C. diff. infections. The only result was that yogurt is more likely to prevent C. Diff. when given with vancomycin or metronidazole. This is exactly, though more verbosely, what Acheron was trying to say. It won't cure it, but it might help a little.
I read not long ago about a study looking at the viability of cultures in shop-bought yoghurt, which do not last long. It turns out that yoghourt from a shop is usually almost completely dead by the time you buy it, which means the "probiotic" label is just a marketing con job. The bacteria in your commercial yoghurt are already dead.
Yeah, I picked up one of the new aggressive c. diff. strains last year and it's not even close to funny. "Bloating and diarrhea" is a King Kong / monkey description. These strains basically shut off your large intestine. Use your imagination and you probably won't be close. Without treatment, you wind up in an ICU and, even if you're 25 and otherwise bushy-tailed, this shit can kill you; it comes out of nowhere. The pain is incredible. The most common drug, Flagyl, is almost as bad as the drugs. It makes you so weak you can't get out of bed. Forget about working or going out of the house when you're on this crap. And with my strain, the c.diff. kept coming back a week after I'd stopped the Flagyl. After 4 months of this horror, I finally convinced my insurance to pay for a new, much more effective drug -- 10 weeks at $325 a day! -- and that finally cleared up the symptoms. But the infection wi'll be there forever, growing in the background. And it recurs every time I take an antibiotic -- then it's back on the kilobuck drug. As disgusting as all this was, nobody, however, ever suggested fecal transplants, which I (admittedly ignorant here) would put on a list of reasonable medical alternatives just below Mexican abortion clinics. Yuk. But, seriously, c.diff. is brutal and these new drug-resistant strains are ' horrors. This new research may come to nothing, but in the mean time, this is just one more reason why we need universal health insurance.
And neither of you appear to have understood the point the article tries to make.
Read it again. There are six very specific spp. that produce the effect. Other combinations of some fewer number of the same spp. did not produce the effect.
Nowhere did either of you produce any reference whatsoever that yogurt, or kefir, or just about any other probiotic source currently available contains just those spp. in just the right combination to produce the effect on C. difficile.
Certainly some probiotics can work, and certainly they can produce a beneficial effect. The point of the article, though, is that very SPECIFIC probiotics were effective in the particular case. Has nothing whatsoever to do with whether the cultures in a given kind of yogurt or kefir are 'good for gut flora' (or whatever).
I do have to confess that I'll be watching the health-food stores for the introduction of 'HEXAFLOR' or some other $110-per-bottle product that features these six precise microorganisms in some way. (Whether or not it actually contains them in some form...) That's where I expect to see the 'monetization' take its most extreme form...
(Well, you did title it 'paranoia may cloud sensibilities'... ;-})
Mod parent up -- b4dcOd3r's, that is. I'd do it with my own mod point but I've already commented in this thread...