Scientists fight bugs with poo

A toilet is seen in New York April 29, 2008.

Credit: Reuters/Lucas Jackson

By Kate Kelland, Health and Science Correspondent: (Reuters) - Once a year, every year, Professor Thomas Borody receives a single-stem rose from one of his most grateful patients. She is, he says, thanking him for restoring her bowel flora.
It's a distasteful cure for a problem that's increasingly widespread: the Clostridium difficile bug, typically caught by patients in hospitals and nursing homes, can be hard to treat with antibiotics. But Borody is one of a group of scientists who believe the answer is a faecal transplant.
     Some jokily call it a "transpoosion." Others have more sciencey names like "bacteriotherapy" or "stool infusion therapy." But the process involves, frankly, replacing a person's poo with someone else's, and in the process, giving them back the "good" bugs they desperately need.
     Borody's grateful patient, Coralie Muddell, suffered months of chronic diarrhoea so bad she would often embarrass herself in public, and had even stopped eating to try to halt the flow.
     The technique that cured her has had a success rate of around 90 percent in the experimental cases where it has been used so far. Now scientists are taking it to the next level, with randomized controlled trials to establish if it can really be a viable option when antibiotics have failed...Read article here...