Fecal Microbiota Transplant and Its Evolving Medical Uses

It's been a while since I posted about my son "Jake".  For those who haven't read his story, here is the link   http://www.fecalmicrobiotatransplant.com/2013/07/crohns-disease-fmt.html  . He has been off medication (Imuran) for nine months now and looks and feels well.  Unfortunately his cousin who was his donor became unsuitable to donate in mid August due to picking up a parasite, so Jake has gone since then without any FMT . Today he had a colonoscopy and endoscopy and we were thrilled with the news.  There is no sign of Crohn's Disease anywhere - not in his intestines, not in his terminal ileum and not in his duodenum!!! In fact, Professor Borody said there was no scarring or ulceration or any indication that the disease had ever existed.  It was all perfect, healthy and inflammation-free.  When he was first diagnosed with Crohn's three years ago it was very widespread.  I am sure that anyone ...

I have hesitated in sharing my son's story with Crohn's Disease and the success we have had with FMT (fecal microbiota transplantation) until now because I didn't want to do so prematurely. My son is 15 years old.  To protect his privacy, I will call him Jake, although that is not his real name :-). Jake was diagnosed with Crohn's Disease a few days before his 13th birthday.  It was widespread ulceration, inflammation and infection throughout his duodenum, terminal ileum, ascending colon, descending colon and rectum.  It was a "gut-wrenching" time for me as a mother to an only child, especially after being told how very serious this disease is, how extensively he had it, that he would have it for the rest of his life, and probably do poorly in the long-term because he was so young at diagnosis.  I was worried sick with the long term consequences of my son taking immune-suppressive drugs (in his case, Imuran) - on the other hand I was terrified of the c...

In order to understand why a person would have a Fecal Microbiota Transplant, we first need to understand the incredible history of Fecal Microbiota Transplants. In 1958, Chief of Surgery at Denver General Hospital, Dr Ben Eiseman, reported in the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology of four patients who were cured of pseudomembraneous colitis.  Enemas containing feces from healthy colons successfully replenished good digestive bacteria.  Pseudomenbranous is a painful, extremely debilitating and potentially fatal inflammation of the colon associated with a bacterium called Clostridium difficile.  In the mid 1980s, Australian gastroenterologist, Professor Thomas Borody, who invented the triple antibiotic therapy for helicobacter pylori bacterium (the cause of stomach ulcers), was faced with one of the most difficult cases he had seen at that time.  His patient was a woman who had developed an in...