Scientific Breakthrough: After Antibiotics have wiped your digestive bacteria, cure is injecting someone’s poop into your digestive tract

Here is an interesting situation – bizarre one really.

We use anti-biotics for a lot of infections.  These anti-biotics, along with decimating the bacteria that is harmful, goes further and gets rid of bacteria in the digestive tract as well.  Great!  Right?  Naah!!  The bacteria in the digestive tract that we have actually keeps us alive.  The millions and millions of them.

Many people who take anti-biotic treatments have been found to develop Clostridium difficile infections.  What is this?  Well Clostridium Difficile “is a species of Gram-positive bacteria of the genus Clostridium that causes severe diarrheaand other intestinal disease when competing bacteria in the gut flora have been wiped out by antibiotics”. (link)

So, what did doctors come up with to cure this situation?

Yes!!  Additional Antibiotics.  Only problem – patients relapse.

So now they have come up with another way out.  It’s gross.  But, hey its effective!  To shove fecal matter of a Healthy person in your digestive tract!  Why?  Because it can re-populate the gut with good bacteria that keep C. diff in check.

So now when you are done with your own digestive bacteria due to that course in antibiotics, try filling your guts with crap from your neighbor and voila, things will be fine again!  Well, it won’t be so gross in a few years.  They are making “Synthetic Poop” for you!

Over the past few years, the incidence of Clostridium difficile infections has risen in the US, and 14,000 people have died from the persistent diarrhea this bacteria causes. Some patients who haven’t been cured by antibiotics have turned to “fecal transplants” – the introduction of a healthy person’s feces into a patient’s digestive system – with, according to case reports and news stories, great success. Now, the New England Journal of Medicine has published results of a randomized clinical trial of the treatment. Of 16 C. diff sufferers given fecal transplants, 15 were cured. (link)

I don’t know about others, but scientists need to sit back and take another look at our way of handling diseases.  Are we running down a slope once we start any treatment?  And the only way to keep healthy is to have some more stuff put in the body to slow the slide down?

Are we any closer to a “wake-up call” to see that body is after all nature, and it needs to be treated and – even MORE importantly – looked at as a holistic system?

RePOOPulate: How Fake Poop Can Cure Patients’ Stomach Ailments

‘Robogut’ Makes Synthetic Poop To Treat Stubborn Infections

Evidently, Fecal Transplants Are All the Rage These Days

Study: Feces Transplant More Effective For Diarrhea Than Antibiotics

Clinical trial of fecal transplant gets impressive results; synthetic poop is in the works

Canada: Synthetic feces for fighting C. difficile

Enhanced by Zemanta

Great! You’ve successfully signed up.

Welcome back! You've successfully signed in.

You've successfully subscribed to Drishtikone - Online Magazine on Geopolitics and Culture from Indian Perspective.

Success! Check your email for magic link to sign-in.

Success! Your billing info has been updated.

Your billing was not updated.