Scientists fight bugs with poo

[Joanne98]

Source: Reuters

Once a year, every year, Professor Thomas Borody receives a single-stem rose from one of his most grateful patients. She is, he says, thanking him for restoring her bowel flora.

It's a distasteful cure for a problem that's increasingly widespread: the Clostridium difficile bug, typically caught by patients in hospitals and nursing homes, can be hard to treat with antibiotics. But Borody is one of a group of scientists who believe the answer is a faecal transplant.

Some jokily call it a "transpoosion." Others have more sciencey names like "bacteriotherapy" or "stool infusion therapy." But the process involves, frankly, replacing a person's poo with someone else's, and in the process, giving them back the "good" bugs they desperately need.

Borody's grateful patient, Coralie Muddell, suffered months of chronic diarrhoea so bad she would often embarrass herself in public, and had even stopped eating to try to halt the flow.



Read more: http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE70I1V620110119

[jody]

1. Politicians fight depression with poo! Hope scientists have more luck. n/t

[Xipe Totec]

2. At the fundamental core of life, there is symbiosis

We are not isolated, unique creations of some god, but the result of billions of years of coexistence. Our very cells are mergers of organisms that were once distinct. Mitochondria, for example, were once isolated creatures.

We think or ourselves as individuals, when we are in fact merely the largest members of massive living colonies.

[phantom power]

3. I think I'd definitely be sticking with 'colonoscope or enema'

:hide:

[mopinko]

4. this is what the appendix appears to be for.

i am not surprised by this. there is evidence that gi diseases like chron's are caused by lack of proper fauna.