Miraculous healings
Stool transplantation may prove to be a promising method of treatment for COVID-19
Andrey Ukrainsky, "Mednovosti"
Intestinal microbiota transplantation was associated with an unusually rapid disappearance of COVID-19 symptoms in two patients. The description of these clinical cases is published in the journal Gut (Biliński et al., Rapid resolution of COVID-19 after faecal microbiota transplantation).
Fecal microbiota transplantation (fecal transplantation) is a treatment method in which a sick person receives a transplant of beneficial bacteria from the colon of a healthy person. It has proven to be an effective treatment for infection caused by Clostridium difficile. With this infection, severe enterocolitis develops.
Scientists from Imperial College London and Warsaw Medical University have described two cases of infection with SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus in patients who received intestinal microbiota transplantation for C.difficile infection. They had symptoms of COVID-19 shortly after the procedure.
The first patient, an 80-year-old male, developed sepsis and pneumonia due to recurrent C.difficile infection. He was tested for COVID-19 (which turned out to be positive) after his temperature rose and markers of inflammation appeared in his blood. The man was prescribed treatment with remdesivir and plasma with antibodies against coronavirus.
In studies, COVID-19 treatment methods prescribed to the patient accelerated recovery only slightly. However, two days after receiving intestinal microbiota transplantation, the patient suddenly lost symptoms of viral infection, the course of pneumonia did not get worse.
The second patient was 19 years old. Microbiota transplantation was assigned to him for C.difficile infection on the background of nonspecific ulcerative colitis. He was diagnosed with COVID-19 15 hours after the procedure, his symptoms were similar to those of the first patient. After two bouts of fever, the symptoms disappeared without additional treatment.
After the patients became ill with COVID-19, the scientists analyzed the feces of both patients for coronavirus. This had to be done to exclude infection during transplantation. The tests were negative.
"Our main conclusion from these cases is that fecal transplants have proven to be safe and equally effective in the treatment of recurrent C.difficile infection in patients with concomitant COVID-19," the scientists write.
In addition, they raised the question of whether stool transplantation can affect the course of COVID-19. Both patients had risk factors predisposing to the severe course of this disease, but the infection was easy, the symptoms disappeared quickly. One explanation for this, scientists believe, may be that the transplant prevented the development of dangerous scenarios. Potentially, this could happen as a result of the interaction of the gut microbiome with the immune system.
Scientists point out that the two cases described do not allow us to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of fecal transplantation in COVID-19.
"These data allow us to suggest that the effect on the intestinal microbe deserves further study as an immunomodulatory strategy in COVID-19," the authors of the clinical report wrote. They plan to conduct a clinical study of fecal transplantation as an additional therapy for coronavirus infection.
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