Fecal Microbiota Transplant and Its Evolving Medical Uses

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...