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| Image from I Heart Guts blog |
There is an interesting mini review in the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology’s September issue that may be of interest to some out there. It is entitled “Fecal Bacteriotherapy, Fecal Transplant, and the Microbiome” by Martin Floch and well, the title is indicative of the article.
Yes, the fecal transplant meme is here to stay. Sure, the cognoscenti already knew about fecal transplants. Perhaps they had read Tara Smith’s discussion of it in her Aetiology blog in 2007. Perhaps they had pondered it when they read the article from my lab on intestinal transplants. Perhaps they had seenthis discussion on MSNBC, or various other stories out there such asthis or this post from Angry by Choice. Or, maybe you just learned about it from Bora’s Carnival of Poop.
But the meme on fecal transplants really spread and many may have first heard about fecal transplants from Carl Zimmer’s New York Times article a month or so ago “How microbes defend and define us“
In the article Zimmer discussed how Dr. Alexander Khoruts used a fecal transplant to treat a woman with a persistent and severe Clostridium infection. And Zimmer discusses how, thought such transplants had been done before, this was the first time that the microbial community was carefully surveyed before and after. (Note, my favorite part of the article is this part, where my friend Janet Jansson describes her reaction:
Two weeks after the transplant, the scientists analyzed the microbes again. Her husband’s microbes had taken over. “That community was able to function and cure her disease in a matter of days,” said Janet Jansson, a microbial ecologist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a co-author of the paper. “I didn’t expect it to work. The project blew me away.”
Anyway Zimmer’s article, as with many of his, garnered a lot of response and got many people discussing the poop on fecal transplants.
Well, this issue of the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology may now be the biggest pile of information about fecal transplants around. That is because, in addition to this little review mentioned above, there are in fact three articles in this issue relating to fecal transplant. Alas, most of you out there will probably only be able to read the review since the other articles are behind a pay wall.
But the review is good. And I think this is not the last you will hear about this. (Though I note that, even though I think fecal transplants have some major potential, they seem to be being oversold a bit by many as some cure all — fodder for a future “Overselling the Microbiome Award” I am sure).
I will end with this line from the review which raises some other issues about fecal transplants:
Probably one of the major problems is to define how this therapy can become socially accepted. (Can you imagine the Food & Drug Administration discussion?)
Floch, M. (2010). Fecal Bacteriotherapy, Fecal Transplant, and the Microbiome Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology, 44 (8), 529-530 DOI: 10.1097/MCG.0b013e3181e1d6e2
Grehan, M., Borody, T., Leis, S., Campbell, J., Mitchell, H., & Wettstein, A. (2010). Durable Alteration of the Colonic Microbiota by the Administration of Donor Fecal Flora Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology, 44 (8), 551-561 DOI: 10.1097/MCG.0b013e3181e5d06b
Khoruts, A., Dicksved, J., Jansson, J., & Sadowsky, M. (2009). Changes in the Composition of the Human Fecal Microbiome After Bacteriotherapy for Recurrent Clostridium Difficile-associated Diarrhea Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology DOI: 10.1097/MCG.0b013e3181c87e02
Yoon, S., & Brandt, L. (2010). Treatment of Refractory/Recurrent C. difficile-associated Disease by Donated Stool Transplanted Via Colonoscopy Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology, 44 (8), 562-566 DOI: 10.1097/MCG.0b013e3181dac035
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