• Welcome to Phoenix Rising!

    Created in 2008, Phoenix Rising is the largest and oldest forum dedicated to furthering the understanding of and finding treatments for complex chronic illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), fibromyalgia (FM), long COVID, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), and allied diseases.

    To become a member, simply click the Register button at the top right.

Fecal transplants beats poop pills

adreno

PR activist
Messages
4,841
Previously, researchers demonstrated that a fecal transplant—taking a healthy person’s stool and putting it in another person—results in a remarkably successful treatment of C. difficile infections. Butscientists don’t really know why it works.

The ick-factor of receiving a fecal enema resulted in the creation of the nonprofit stool bank OpenBiome, which aimed to create pills that could be taken orally instead. Seres Therapeutics took the idea a step further by creating the SER-109 pill. Here, spores from good bacterial species are isolated and encapsulated in pill form, while disease-spreading microbes like Listeria and Salmonella are eliminated.

The goal is to reintroduce the diverse population of microbes that normally live in the gut, which is disrupted during a C. difficile infection. Researchers from Seres Therapeutics, Mayo Clinic, and Massachusetts General Hospital publisheda paper in The Journal of Infectious Diseases earlier this year saying that the SER-109 treatment was effective for preventing C. difficile infections in an early stage trial.

But results from a more advanced trial released today indicate that there was no significant difference in the outcome of patients receiving the therapy compared to those who got a placebo. In a press release, Seres noted this was “inconsistent” with their expectations.
http://www.technologyreview.com/s/6...shows-that-the-microbiome-is-still-a-mystery/
 

A.B.

Senior Member
Messages
3,780
Fecal Transplants: What Is Being Transferred?

Fecal transplants are increasingly utilized for treatment of recurrent infections (i.e., Clostridium difficile) in the human gut and as a general research tool for gain-of-function experiments (i.e., gavage of fecal pellets) in animal models. Changes observed in the recipient's biology are routinely attributed to bacterial cells in the donor feces (~10^11 per gram of human wet stool). Here, we examine the literature and summarize findings on the composition of fecal matter in order to raise cautiously the profile of its multipart nature. In addition to viable bacteria, which may make up a small fraction of total fecal matter, other components in unprocessed human feces include colonocytes (~10^7 per gram of wet stool), archaea (~10^8 per gram of wet stool), viruses (~10^8 per gram of wet stool), fungi (~10^6 per gram of wet stool), protists, and metabolites. Thus, while speculative at this point and contingent on the transplant procedure and study system, nonbacterial matter could contribute to changes in the recipient's biology. There is a cautious need for continued reductionism to separate out the effects and interactions of each component.
 

msf

Senior Member
Messages
3,650
Could it be because in the transplant, the bacteria are already established as a colony, whereas they are not in pill form and therefore some crucial species may not be able to establish themselves independently in the hostile environment of a C.difficile-colonised gut?
 

msf

Senior Member
Messages
3,650
RE: pathogenic bacteria, the question is whether they restricted themselves to only removing pathogenic bacteria that are not normally resident in the gut, such as Listeria and Salmonella (mentioned in the article), or whether they also removed potentially pathogenic bacteria that are normally resident in the gut, such as Streptococcus and Enterococcus?
 

Bob

Senior Member
Messages
16,455
Location
England (south coast)
It's a shame that SER-109 didn't work out. I think there are other similar products in the pipeline, so there may be some success somewhere down the line.
 

A.B.

Senior Member
Messages
3,780
I wonder if it's the bacteriophages that are required. They could be needed as predator in the ecosystem.