#29) The New Scoop on POOP

Some day Stool Banks will be as common place as Blood Banks are today.  What I am talking about is human stool (poop) transplants, yes, you would have several cups of a strangers poo (fecal material) transplanted into your colon for medicinal purposes.  This fecal transplant would be taking fecal material from a healthy person and transferring it into the colon of a sick person in order to restore the healthy colony of beneficial bacteria.   The results so far with a fecal transplant has been very encouraging for people who have an infection causing chronic diarrhea.  The C Difficile infection affects around 3 million people per year, normally these people would be subjected to antibiotics but antibiotics kill off the good bacteria and over time the bad bacteria become resistant to the antibiotic therapy.

These infections are serious, killing approximately 14,000 people per year, especially dangerous to kids and the elderly  causing colon inflammation and diarrhea.  New studies have shown that fecal bacteriotherapy can also be effective in difficult cases of  constipation, colitis, irritable bowel syndrome and even in cases of  M.S.  and Parkinson's Disease??

Would you want to know who you received your fecal implant from?   Should it be anonymous? If you were a donor would you brag about it?  Would you have to ingest the transplant, maybe in tablet form?   So many questions and for the time being so few answers.  Until next time, Dr. Mark Doyle