Posted on 09/04/2014 7:28:59 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Mark Smith was a microbiology graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology when, in 2011, a family friend became infected with the notorious superbug clostridium difficile. C. diff can cause severe diarrhea, disability, and malnutrition and is responsible for roughly 14,000 deaths in the United States each year. In 2012, after taking seven rounds of the antibiotic vancomycin and failing to improve, Smith’s friend received a DIY fecal transplant from his roommate—in their apartment, using an over-the-counter enema kit. The friend recovered within days, but “the whole thing was absurd, not at all how it should be done,” Smith said.
Fecal transplantation—transferring the feces of a healthy person into the bowel of someone with an infection—appears in published case reports as early as 1958. But in the past few years, scientists have established with more rigor that it can resolve recurrent C. diff infections around 90 percent of the time. In 2013, a randomized controlled trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that the procedure worked better for this condition than antibiotics—so much better that researchers stopped the study early, saying it was unethical to continue to deny the transplants to the control group.
Within two to three days of the transplant, most patients are “symptom free …They get their lives back,” said Michael Edmond, an infectious disease specialist at Virginia Commonwealth University. It’s about as close to a miracle cure as medicine offers.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
If that’s the best medicine then Obamacare is going to make us all very, very healthy indeed.
No matter how ya slice it or dice it, still sounds like a sh!t sammich to me. =D
Ah. Another valuable social service being provided daily by male homosexuals.
Eat sh*t and live, in other words.
My boss had a C. diff infection. Dang near killed him.
Some tears back I was talking with my VA doc, just in general terms, about the off-the-wall stuff nurses/doctors had to do in certain cases. She told me of this procedure, I will tell you my hair curled.
Later on I talked with my niece, who was just entering the profession, and some of the stuff she told me she had to do gave me an Afro - and I don’t feel that I have led a sheltered life.
My mother has had 3 consecutive C. Diff infections. But she is very old and faces a host of other problems, including paralysis. I only heard of these “fecal transplants” with these consecutive infections - haven’t gone that route yet. These C. Diff infections sure are persistent.
I hope they didn't have a Marguerita party afterwards to celebrate....
I remember reading “ The Making of a Surgeon”.
In it the young resident recounts how they got the idea of replacing the patients gut flora with an ahem “ fecal milkshake”. Took a small amount and put it in the blender with milk etc, and fed it to the unsuspecting patient.
When they told the attending physician about it on Monday he nearly killed them....
I take it that the good bacteria in normal stool kills the c. diff?
Jesu! (Almost said Holy Crap! :-) ) Glad I didn't read the full story - as I was having my morning cuppa - would have barfed all over the place upon reading that.
Yuck. I would go the route of essential oils and other ways to refresh the gut flora. My sister has really studied the gut flora & I would call her first.
C diff did kill my step father couple of years ago after he took antibiotics for a post oral biopsy infection. By the time my mom convinced him to go to the doctor, they couldn’t save hin.
I wonder if they could use baby poop. It seems like babies would be less likely to carry diseases...
The problem with treating the c. diff. infections with antibiotics is that often the antibiotic caused the c. diff infection in the first place.
It would seem that a microbiologist would be able to replicate the gut flora and put it into a pill or milkshake and leave the fecal matter out.
RE: It seems like babies would be less likely to carry diseases...
Depends on where the baby is born.
I would be very cautious taking them from babies born in West Africa right now.
My sympathies. That must have been very hard.
Vancomycin seems to be the only thing out there for C.Diff. After weeks of treatment with vancomycin, the C.Diff goes away for a several weeks, then returns with a vengeance.
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