DustyKat
Super Moderator
Minneapolis:
Frozen faecal matter that's swallowed like a pill appears effective against a recurring and sometimes deadly bacterial infection that can cause devastating diarrhoea, a study from Boston researchers found.
A trial of the approach involving 20 people with hard-to-treat Clostridium difficile colitis infections yielded a success rate of 90 per cent, with no sign of relapse during the two-month study. Patients took 15 pills on two consecutive days of specially prepared faecal matter that was collected from healthy donors. Fourteen saw immediate improvement, while four others needed a second cycle one week later, the study showed.
The pills may provide an alternative to more difficult ways to conduct faecal transplants, including via colonoscopies and nasal tubes, said Elizabeth Hohmann, an associate professor of medicine and infectious disease at Harvard Medical School and a senior study author. The approach is part of a new wave of therapy designed to restore normal gut bacteria in people with a wide range of ailments, often caused by antibiotic overuse.
The frozen pills "are all about getting people more comfortable with this as a therapeutic option", Professor Hohmann said. "It's gross but it works really well for these infections that keep coming back.”
The study, released Saturday by the Journal of the American Medical Association, involved patients who ranged in age from 7 to 90. All had suffered at least two episodes of C. difficile infections that were so severe they landed in the hospital or three episodes of milder disease that returned when they started to be weaned from standard antibiotic therapy.
The infection leads to 250,000 hospitalisations and 14,000 deaths each year in the United States. Certain strains of bacteria can easily resist drug therapy, leading to recurrences in 30 per cent of patients after a first infection and 60 per cent after two or more, the researchers said.
The researchers didn't have any trouble recruiting for the trial given the severity of the illness and the team's earlier success using liquid faecal matter that was delivered through a tube in the nose.
"It's a pretty easy sell once these folks have had C. diff colitis several times," said Professor Hohmann, who is also an investigator at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. "They were coming to us. I've been doing this for two years and I've had less than five patients referred to me who said this is so yucky I won't even consider it.”
The pills make the approach safer since it removes the chance of vomiting up the substance and aspirating it into the lungs, Professor Hohmann said.
Washington Post
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/frozen-...a-bacteria-20141012-114w4m.html#ixzz3G00TtKST
Frozen faecal matter that's swallowed like a pill appears effective against a recurring and sometimes deadly bacterial infection that can cause devastating diarrhoea, a study from Boston researchers found.
A trial of the approach involving 20 people with hard-to-treat Clostridium difficile colitis infections yielded a success rate of 90 per cent, with no sign of relapse during the two-month study. Patients took 15 pills on two consecutive days of specially prepared faecal matter that was collected from healthy donors. Fourteen saw immediate improvement, while four others needed a second cycle one week later, the study showed.
The pills may provide an alternative to more difficult ways to conduct faecal transplants, including via colonoscopies and nasal tubes, said Elizabeth Hohmann, an associate professor of medicine and infectious disease at Harvard Medical School and a senior study author. The approach is part of a new wave of therapy designed to restore normal gut bacteria in people with a wide range of ailments, often caused by antibiotic overuse.
The frozen pills "are all about getting people more comfortable with this as a therapeutic option", Professor Hohmann said. "It's gross but it works really well for these infections that keep coming back.”
The study, released Saturday by the Journal of the American Medical Association, involved patients who ranged in age from 7 to 90. All had suffered at least two episodes of C. difficile infections that were so severe they landed in the hospital or three episodes of milder disease that returned when they started to be weaned from standard antibiotic therapy.
The infection leads to 250,000 hospitalisations and 14,000 deaths each year in the United States. Certain strains of bacteria can easily resist drug therapy, leading to recurrences in 30 per cent of patients after a first infection and 60 per cent after two or more, the researchers said.
The researchers didn't have any trouble recruiting for the trial given the severity of the illness and the team's earlier success using liquid faecal matter that was delivered through a tube in the nose.
"It's a pretty easy sell once these folks have had C. diff colitis several times," said Professor Hohmann, who is also an investigator at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. "They were coming to us. I've been doing this for two years and I've had less than five patients referred to me who said this is so yucky I won't even consider it.”
The pills make the approach safer since it removes the chance of vomiting up the substance and aspirating it into the lungs, Professor Hohmann said.
Washington Post
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/frozen-...a-bacteria-20141012-114w4m.html#ixzz3G00TtKST