By now, pretty much everyone is aware that sometimes in medicine, treatments involve removing something from one person’s body and putting it in someone else’s. Organ transplants, blood transfusions, and bone marrow transfusions are probably the most well-known, but there’s another type of transplant that can help restore health–a fecal transplant. Yes, fecal, as in stool.
Every person’s body contains bacteria. Some bacteria are harmful, while some are beneficial. There is growing evidence that the microbiota, or the community of bacteria that live in the gut, helps protect the body against infection and enhance your immune system. It is to a person’s benefit to ensure that adequate levels of helpful bacteria remain in their large intestine.
Unfortunately, some medical treatments like antibiotics can kill these helpful bacteria. After all, antibiotics are designed to kill bacteria, and the drugs can’t tell the difference between good and bad bacteria. These medications are necessary to treat certain conditions, but afterwards they can leave people more susceptible to illness, partially due to the destruction of the helpful bacteria. One example of this is a serious colitis, or colon infection, by Clostridium Difficile, a type of bacteria that can cause inflammation in the gut. C. Diff. usually is kept in check by the normal flora and is resistant to many of the usual antibiotics. So if the normal flora get wiped out by another treatment, the Clostridium Difficile is free to run riot in the body. C. Diff. colitis can usually be treated, but rarely it can be severe enough to necessitate surgical resection of the colon. Sometimes, it keeps on recurring despite appropriate treatment.
That’s where a fecal transplant comes in. Human stool contains many of the healthy bacteria that typically live in the gut. Studies have shown that fecal transplants from strangers are as effective as those from family members, although people are often more comfortable receiving them from family, for understandable reasons.
The human body is truly amazing. Even a waste product–stool–can become something beneficial. I can only dream of what advances medicine will make in the years to come.
