Frozen Fecal Pills Help Patients Suffering From C. Diff Infection

First Posted: Oct 13, 2014 10:52 AM EDT
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Frozen fecal pills could help patients infected with Clostridium difficile bacteria (C. difficile), according to the findings of a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Patients dealing with the potentially deadly health issue can receive life-saving treatments through fecal transplants, which typically involve implanting bacteria from a healthy gut into an infected patient via a colonoscopy. However, this can be quite costly and invasive.

Now, patients have the option to use fecal pills, which are capsules made of frozen feces from healthy individuals.

"If reproduced in future studies with active controls, these results may help make FMT accessible to a wider population of patients, in addition to potentially making the procedure safer. The use of frozen inocula allows for screening of donors in advance. Furthermore, storage of frozen material allows retesting of donors for possible incubating viral infections prior to administration. The use of capsules obviates the need for invasive procedures for administration, further increasing the safety of FMT by avoiding procedure-associated complications and significantly reducing cost," noted the study authors, in a news release. 

So far, findings have revealed that the success rate of using fecal pills in people with potentially deadly bacterial imbalance in the gut is comparable to that of stool transplant, also known as fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT).

For the study, researchers froze samples of healthy stools enclosed in FMT capsules and then evaluated 20 patients who had taken the capsules for the capsule's safety and efficacy. Findings revealed that most of the patients were cured of their diarrhea, with significant improvements in their health. Furthermore, researchers also found no adverse events associated with the treatment.

"No serious adverse events attributed to FMT were observed. Resolution of diarrhea was achieved in 14 patients after a single capsule-based FMT," concluded study author Ilan Youngster, from the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. "Self-ranked health scores improved significantly on a scale of 1 to 10 from a median of 5 for overall health and 4.5 for gastrointestinal-specific health on the day prior to FMT to 8 after FMT administration for both overall and gastrointestinal health."

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