Feces-Filled Capsules Treat Bacterial Infection

sciencehabit writes Clostridium difficile infections kill approximately 14,000 Americans every year, often because the diarrhea-causing bacteria are highly resistant to standard antibiotics. Now, scientists have found an unusual way to combat the bugs: human feces in pill form. In the new study, researchers show that frozen fecal matter encapsulated in clear, 1.6 g synthetic pills was just as safe and effective as traditional fecal transplant techniques at treating C. difficile. Within 8 weeks or less, 18 out of 20 participants saw a complete resolution of diarrhea after consuming 30 or 60 of the feces-filled capsules. "It's probably not the best experience of your life," says team leader Ilan Youngster, a pediatric infectious disease doctor at Harvard University. "But it beats getting a tube stuck down your throat or a colonoscopy or having C. diff."

Comments

Suppository form works just fine.

[jpellino]

Yes, that's been the preferred method so far. People gong on massive antibiotics have stockpiled frozen fecal suppositories with perfectly good results. Not FDA approves since it's not been properly tested until recently.

Re: Suppository form works just fine.

[Bite The Pillow]

Probiotics are a very general class of things. And specifically taking bacteria pills (that is, a specific type of probiotic) like acidophilus is not as effective.

When you take antibiotics, you are disturbing an ecosystem that has evolved over years. Everything you eat could contribute to the bacteria makeup. Dirt is supposed to have beneficial "feel good" bacteria, and the microbiome may affect mood. Acidophilus and Bifidus and Bulgaricus alone will not restore what you just killed with antibiotics, or what you lost through diarrhea.

Healthy donor stool is the easiest, quickest way to get all of the bacteria. One pill won't do it, because your microbiome is likely to just kill most of the intruders. Not the immune system, but the existing bacteria - maybe just by starving them out. Repeated doses gives you a good chance to let the varied bacteria strains get established.

Why don't we just figure out which bacteria are needed and give you those? Man, you are brilliant. So brilliant, that you won't be surprised to find out that lots of people are trying to figure out which ones are good, useless, or bad. As you can imagine, isolating the effects of a single type of bacterium on humans, without negatively impacting health, which would throw off the results of such a study, is complicated.

And it is by no means crude. Crude is having someone poop in a jar, putting it in a blender, and giving yourself a poop enema. This method seems to be a simpler and cleaner way, as well as being possible to get it further into the intestines than you can do at home safely.

Re: Suppository form works just fine.

[Anonymous Coward]

Probiotics are only effective to prevent C diff. Useless once you have it, except maybe to prevent recurrence. Once you have C diff, it is imperative to get treatment, either fecal transfer (either as a pill or via colonoscopic instillation; enemas or nasoduodenal routes are less effective) or go on to a special antibiotic regiment.

The problem is that C diff has become to common that it is starting to become resistant to the typical treatment (metronidazole or oral vancomycin). This is starting to become dangerous, because unchecked C diff can be lethal (I have seen people die from this) or result in the removal of the entire colon - if your surgeon can get to you in time.

And before you DIYer get any ideas....this is not something to mess around with. It's kinda like packing your own parachute, you better know what the hell you're doing cause you probably only have one shot at this.

Re: Timeframe?

[Anonymous Coward]

My stepfather had c. Diff last year. It isn't run of the mill diarrhea. Remember that scene in dumb and dumber with the laxative pill? Something like that. You are physically exhausted and your body is destroying itself. It spreads infection, your immune system goes haywire, your kidneys and liver work overtime breaking things down.

They quarantined my stepfather and told us that he probably wouldn't make it due to his age. He was put on antibiotics and morphine. I kept complaining to nurses that antibiotics actually caused this (he cut his fingertip and they gave him a dose 3x higher than necessary, if he needed it at all) and to look at alternatives but they don't really care. So many patients to treat, so little time. Nurses said the poop transplant was the option of last resort(even with 90% success rate) and that they would continue with antibiotics. My stepfather was pretty lucky to survive it and is now cautious about antibiotic use.

If standard diarrhea clears up in 8 weeks, is that in any way useful if you're dead in two?

Re: Timeframe?

[Fwipp]

Yep, the antibiotic regimen they put you on is no joke, either. It wipes out all your intestinal flora, leaving you super vulnerable to recolonization (and those spores are real fucking hard to eliminate).

My grandmother had a fecal transplant and she cleared up in days, after literal months of illness.

Source: I used to be closely involved with an MD whose primary focus was this bug. Well, the grandma part was sourced from my mom.

Re:Perspective

[Seumas]

Personally, I like how everyone has completely lost their shit over Ebola overseas and oh my god we have to do something about it and blah blah blah blah.

But as soon as there's a case of it state-side, these same people are all "oh, this could never become an issue here and more people die from sneezing themselves to death each year in this country than have died of Ebola blah blah blah".

I mean, pick your concern and try to be consistent about it.

Besides, the same could be said about all of these global cooling^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hwarming^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hclimate change idiots. I mean, not idiots on the face of it, but just idiots because they spread idiotic bullshit like "it's too late, nothing we can do now will help because we're doomed to die by 2030 because of global-whatever-the-fuck-we're-calling-it-today!".

As for why Ebola is so newsworthy and strikes such fear in people -- is it really a mystery to you? Where have you been the last thirty years, when it was portrayed as a catalyst for the potential end to all of humanity in hundreds of films? It is terrifying in the same way that plane crashes are terrifying. Statistically, people should be more afraid of crossing the street or the prostate cancer 100% of men will eventually get, but the idea of contracting something from beyond your own control (especially when hearing reports of system failures across the board that seem not to take things seriously where Ebola is concerned) that will basically liquefy you into blood "overnight" is far more /terrifying/.

Kind of the same way everyone has been able to capitalize on terrorism. A couple buildings got knocked down and for the next hundred year's, we're afraid of people boarding airplanes with tennis shoes, underwear, and smarmy slogans on tee-shirts. Logic has little to do with it.