Fecal Microbiota Transplant and Its Evolving Medical Uses

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...

With World MS Day being 29th May, it seems appropriate to post a link to a previous entry about Multiple Sclerosis and Fecal Transplant. The link is to three case studies from Centre of Digestive Diseases, Sydney Australia (Professor Borody).   Three of his patients who had multiple sclerosis were treated for constipation (one of the many complications of this terrible disease) and to their's and Professor Borody's surprise, their MS symptoms unexpectedly also disappeared, so much so that as at the time of writing the study all patients remained in remission, one of them for 15 years!  Professor Borody speculates that a gut pathogen may be responsible for causing the neurological disease and encourages a new direction in medical research of MS. http://www.fecalmicrobiotatransplant.com/2012/08/could-multiple-sclerosis-be-caused-by.html

This story comes from a mother who posted as a visitor on http://thepowerofpoo.blogspot.com.au/ - it's a very powerful story showing the tremendous results that FMT can give to a IBD sufferer (a child). It's definitely worth reading! Kathy's Success Story "Hi, I’m Kathy, mom to a nine-year-old girl diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis in January 2012 and successfully treated with FMT. I don't want to know where we would be now if we hadn't tried it, or if it hadn’t worked. We went through seven months of hell trying to get her better before we started FMT. Here’s our story: E's symptoms appeared out-of-the blue. On Christmas Eve 2011, she called me into the bathroom to look at her wipe, which had some blood on it. Over the next few days, we noticed that her stool, though completely formed, had some visible blood coating the outside of it. I didn't make too much of it, which is surprising since I tend to be a bit of an alarmist when anyt...

The results of a randomized controlled study has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine this week which showed a 94% cure rate for clostridium difficile as opposed to 31% of patients taking the antibiotic vancomycin. The study was stopped prematurely becase the results were so outstanding for those who were given fecal transplant that it was considered to be unethical not to offer the treatment to all patients participating in the study. Read more below courtesy of the New England Journal.nbsp;  Here is a link to the study: Duodenal Infusion of Donor Feces for Recurrent Clostridium difficile — NEJM and a link to the editorial written by Ciarán P. Kelly, M.D. Fecal Microbiota Transplantation — An Old Therapy Comes of Age — NEJM "Fecal Microbiota Transplantation — An Old Therapy Comes of Age Ciarán P. Kelly, M.D. January 16, 2013 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMe1214816 In 1958, doctors in Denver administered feces by enema to their patients with fulminant, life-...