Fecal Therapy: only $250 per serving

In the USA, a fecal bank has been created for the treatment of fecal transplantation

Copper news based on ScienceNews: Introducing the first bank of fecesIn the USA, the world's first bank of fecal samples has appeared for the treatment of patients suffering from a severe form of recurrent diarrhea caused by an antibiotic-resistant strain of the bacterium Clostridium difficile, by fecal transplantation.

According to ScienceNews, the non-profit OpenBiome foundation was created by graduate students of Princeton University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who faced difficulties in finding suitable transplant material required for the treatment of their relative.

In the USA, about 14 thousand people per year die as a result of infection with resistant C.difficile. The almost one hundred percent effectiveness and safety of the method, called Fecal Microbiota Transplantation (FMT), in this case has been proven in several clinical trials. Thus, according to data published in the New England Journal of Medicine in January 2013, the use of the FMT method was three to four times more effective than a course of the antibiotic vancomycin (van Nood et al., Duodenal Infusion of Donor Feces for Recurrent Clostridium difficile). The essence of the method is the introduction of a solution of feces taken from a healthy donor into the gastrointestinal tract of patients with the help of an endoscope, resulting in a "reboot" of the microbiome and the restoration of normal intestinal flora.

The idea to create a bank of fecal samples obtained from verified healthy donors came to Carolyn Edelstein, a student of public relations at Princeton, and Mark B. Smith, a microbiologist student from MIT, after their friend and relative, infected with resistant C.difficile and trying to use the FMT method, encountered difficulties in finding suitable material for transplantation. Since the method is still considered experimental, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires a complex bureaucratic procedure and a thorough examination of fecal samples for each FMT case. A relative of the students had to suffer from C.difficile for a year and a half and unsuccessfully take seven courses of vancomycin before he was completely cured after using FMT.

Edelstein and Smith recruited their friends, students from Princeton, Harvard and MIT, as donors, received appropriate permits from the FDA and created a non–profit organization OpenBiome on the basis of the MIT microbiology laboratory, facilitating access to FMT for both patients and doctors. Since September 2013, the bank has provided 13 hospitals and clinics across the country with more than 135 doses of appropriately tested, filtered, frozen and ready-to-use fecal samples at a price of $ 250 per dose.

FMT, as some studies have shown, has prospects also as a method of therapy for ulcerative colitis, obesity, diabetes and even Parkinson's disease.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru20.02.2014