Fecal Transplant study: 58-70% response rate

[Dreambirdie]

Honestly, I would be very wary of doing something like this. So many people carry parasites that are hard to detect, even with the best labs around. If your gut is already compromised, those parasites could easily dig in and do some serious damage.

And also, how will you know that someone else's fecal flora is going to work for you? Every body is unique and the flora that makes someone "healthy" could make someone else sick.

This is a new therapy. I would like to see a LOT more evidence before I would dive in to mixing poo in my blender.

 

[MishMash]

Honestly, I would be very wary of doing something like this. So many people carry parasites that are hard to detect, even with the best labs around. If your gut is already compromised, those parasites could easily dig in and do some serious damage.

And also, how will you know that someone else's fecal flora is going to work for you? Every body is unique and the flora that makes someone "healthy" could make someone else sick.

This is a new therapy. I would like to see a LOT more evidence before I would dive in to mixing poo in my blender.

Don't mix poo in your blender. Especially if you are planning to use it for margaritas later on.

I thought we evolved with parasites in our cuts? Or should I say: we co-evolved. Taking them out might be responsible for what ails us.

 

[Rrrr]

this is an excellent video and slide show from a doc who is doing fecal transplants AND trying to make it into a pill form.

http://www.autismcanada.org/scientificsymposium/2012/vids/004_Emma_Allen/

 

[MishMash]

Rrrr
I hope they are using really strong capsules.

 

[Rrrr]

Honestly, I would be very wary of doing something like this. So many people carry parasites that are hard to detect, even with the best labs around. If your gut is already compromised, those parasites could easily dig in and do some serious damage.

And also, how will you know that someone else's fecal flora is going to work for you? Every body is unique and the flora that makes someone "healthy" could make someone else sick.

This is a new therapy. I would like to see a LOT more evidence before I would dive in to mixing poo in my blender.

dr. myhill suggests having the donor do a stool test first to see if the donor has anything bad, like parasites or whatever. this is her site on fecal transplants:

ME/CFS specialist in UK:
Dr. Myhill's instructions:
http://www.drmyhill.co.uk/wiki/Faecal_bacteriotherapy

 

[anniekim]

I have heard of these types of experiments for many years, though at the time I think they were at the pain unit at Newcastle University NSW. This follow-up is very sketchy. There needs to be a larger and more extensive study, with programmed follow up. My GP would know about this kind of thing, it was he who mentioned these studies to me several times iirc. I get the impression this is not even a pilot study, its a collection of case studies over 20 years.

However one of the things I am interested in is that lipopolysaccharide, a class of bacterial toxin, may trigger pathological changes in us. This is because in healthy people its confined to the gut and the portal blood supply from the gut to the liver. In us its systemic. One of the things this induces, at least in localized bacterial infections, is migration of immune cells, including gamma delta T cells. I am trying to understand what systemic LPS infection in the body will do. So far its more confusing me that helping me. What would happen though if you reduced the LPS levels by reducing LPS producing bacteria in the gut?

Its worth noting that gamma delta T cells can both switch on and switch off the immune response depending on conditions. I wonder, pure speculation at this point, if it could be that the migration of gamma delta T cells away from the gut wall increases immune response in the gut, leading to more gut damage, resulting in more LPS translocation to the blood stream, which overwhelms liver detox and gets into the blood, resulting in more gamma delta T cells migration, which leads to more gut damage. This would be another vicious cycle mechanism, the first of which I encountered in 1993 and which involved changes in diet that I now can show would increase gamma delta T cells presence in the gut wall.

One of the things that gamma delta T cells do to the gut is increase healing, partly by suppressing the immune response. My idea is that improving gamma delta T cell numbers in the gut might break the vicious cycle. Altering gut ecology could help.

What would this look like? Possibly too many gamma delta T cells in the blood. While at least one lab has suspected this, other immune studies have not found it.

Bye, Alex

Alex, do you know why the lipopolysaccaride is systemic in people with M.E and not just confined to the gut as in healthy people? Is this due to leaky gut? If so, would healing the leaky gut help? Many thanks

 

[GracieJ]

I'm all for a cleaned-up version of a close family member's hopefully compatible bacteria cultures. Just can't see me using my blender or an enema bag like this... and can't see me asking a family member for a sample anyway! Posted before on an earlier thread about this, will try to find it and add here.

 

[alex3619]

Hi anniekim, leaky gut may be a misnomer. There is indeed a leak from gut to blood, but I don't know how much is pathogenic bacteria in the gut, how much is failure of gut integrity, and how much is failure of detox mechanisms. Healing the gut is part of it. So is improving detox. I am looking at detox mechanisms with LPS in mind.

The idea of direct bacterial transplant is problematic. As I said researchers can select specific strains, grow them in culture, then mix them for transplant. This can be highly purified.

Bye, Alex

 

[anniekim]

Thanks Alex for your helpful reply. When you say you don't know how much is pathogenic bacteria, are you saying that as well as the compromised gut lining and poor detox poor pathogenic bacteria can also contribute to it becoming systemic and remain not just in the gut?

Also would reducing LPS be achieved through taking antibiotics?

Many thanks

 

[alex3619]

No anniekin, if bacteria became systemic you would have toxic shock. The problem is that different bacterial toxins are produced by different gut bacteria. If you have the wrong kind they could be more toxic. LPS itself is not really a toxin, its a class of toxins.

Antibiotics would reduce LPS load, but would also kill beneficial bacteria and is only a temporary solution.

 

[est_sunshine]

Yes Alex I believe you are on the right track (from my relatively limited understanding of this field!)

I found this presentation very interesting regarding the inability of those with Autism to process certain fatty acids and the relative toxicity on the body. Very interesting!
http://www.autismcanada.org/scientificsymposium/2012/vids/001_Derrick_MacFabe/

 

[merylg]

Yes Alex I believe you are on the right track (from my relatively limited understanding of this field!)

I found this presentation very interesting regarding the inability of those with Autism to process certain fatty acids and the relative toxicity on the body. Very interesting!
http://www.autismcanada.org/scientificsymposium/2012/vids/001_Derrick_MacFabe/

Hi est_sunshine, fascinating video presentation! The rats were entertaining... if not a little disturbing Propionic acid is still used in Australia as a preservative for bread. Check the fine print, assuming you can tolerate wheat & gluten!

http://www.couriermail.com.au/life/...rap-preservative/story-fn8t7s4s-1226295810108

 

[Emootje]

Great video presentation Sunshine!
It looks like propionate could be responsible for some of the ME/CFS findings.

Propionic acid (propionate):

• Increases Sympathetic Nervous System activity
• Increases NMDA receptor activity
• Increases Lipid peroxidation
• Reduces Glutathion
• Reduces Carnitine
• Causes intracellular acidosis
• Impaired mitochondrial function

Short-chain fatty acid fermentation products of the gut microbiome: implications in autism spectrum disorders

 

[anniekim]

No anniekin, if bacteria became systemic you would have toxic shock. The problem is that different bacterial toxins are produced by different gut bacteria. If you have the wrong kind they could be more toxic. LPS itself is not really a toxin, its a class of toxins.

Antibiotics would reduce LPS load, but would also kill beneficial bacteria and is only a temporary solution.

Thanks Alex. As you can see my understanding of all of this is zero, so thanks for your patience. So when you say lps is systemic in people with m.e, you mean not the bacteria itself but the toxins from the bacteria and it is not clear whether these toxins become systemic due to overgrowth of bad bacteria, weak gut lining or poor detox mechanisms? Many thanks

 

[alex3619]

Yes anniekim, that is right. Different researchers claims the issues are due to overgrowth/bad bacteria, detox failure or gut integrity failure (of which detox failure is a special kind). Any of these could be right, or even all three.

However one issue I keep thinking about is what if you have a localized bacterial infection that is not in the gut? Immune cells such as gamma delta T cells will migrate from the gut to the infection, potentially leaving the gut vulnerable. This certainly happens in illnesses like pneumonia.

 

[anniekim]

Thanks Alex. Your question is interesting...

 

[Hip]

this is an excellent video and slide show from a doc who is doing fecal transplants AND trying to make it into a pill form.

http://www.autismcanada.org/scientificsymposium/2012/vids/004_Emma_Allen/

Interesting how Dr Emma Allen says in the above video that, in the cause-an-effect studies of gut bacteria in conditions like autism, the focus has been too much on bacterial species, and not enough on bacterial genes. She says that the very same bacterial species taken from two different peoples' guts will tend to have a different genetic makeup, and it is the particular bacterial genes that determine the effects of a bacterium in the gut.

She says that gene sequencing technology is progressing to a point now where determining the entire genetic profile of all the bacteria in someone's gut is becoming possible.

Note also that a bacterium does not just get its genes "at birth", but also acquires new genes later in life that are delivered to it by bacteriophages. Bacteriophages are viruses that only infect bacteria, and when they do, these viruses inject their genetic package into the bacterium, transforming the way that bacterium functions.

Bacteriophages are thus a very important part of the gut ecology, and play a fundamental role in determining the genetic makeup the gut microbiome.

 

[Foggy]

I saw this turd therapy on 'Catalyst' a couple of years ago - think it was to treat C.difficile.

If it works for IBS etc and you can get over the ewwwwww factor, then why not.

 

[froufox]

I'm just wondering if anyone has bought one of Sky Curtis' books and/or consulted her about this? If so, how did u get on?

 

[Wayne]

Another recent article: Transplanted Feces Cures Drug-Resistant Gut Infection
January 17, 2013

A Dutch research team says transplanting human feces from a healthy person to a sick person can cure a common and severe intestinal infection that antibiotics cannot control.

The human gut is filled with billions of useful and protective bacteria. But those bacteria can be wiped out when people with infections are treated with a long course of antibiotics. That can leave them vulnerable to new and potentially more dangerous infections. Many hospital patients in this condition become infected with a potent bacterium calledClostridium difficile. Symptoms of diarrhea, abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting frequently return after treatment with more medicine.

In the first controlled trial using donor stool to restore the gut's normal balance of bacteria, gastroenterologist Josbert Keller, in The Hague, was able to cure 13 of the 16 study participants infected with C. difficile, with just one infusion of the fecal mixture. Two others were cured with a follow-up treatment. Use of antibiotics alone cured only seven of the 26 infected patients in two comparison groups.

The healthy donor stool, mixed into a saline solution that Keller says resembles chocolate milk, can be introduced to the sick person's intestinal tract through a colonoscopy, through a nasal tube into the lower stomach, or by enema.

Fecal therapy is often used to treat livestock, and there are references to it in ancient Chinese medical texts. Keller calls it "the most powerful probiotic you can imagine." His study is published in the New England Journal of Medicine.