Fresh versus frozen: Vancouver doctor tests fecal transplants

[FreeRyde]

Fighting the nasty bowel infection Clostridium difficile, Patricia (aka Mrs. Claus) Verrier was told about a procedure she could try on herself.

But the idea of performing a fecal transplant, which is essentially getting an enema of someone else’s feces, was unacceptable.

“I refused it,” said Verrier, who suffers from Crohn’s diseases and lives on a disability pension.

She was lucky enough to be referred to Dr. Ted Steiner, a Vancouver General Hospital infectious disease physician who is participating in a national clinical trial of fecal transplants.

Verrier, who is in her 60s, had the procedure done in June and is no longer suffering from the ongoing diarrhea associated with C. difficile.

“I had it every day for two years,” she recalled of her diarrhea before the treatment.

She feels her life now, which includes volunteering, is wonderful.

“There a lot of (C. difficile) patients out there,” said Verrier. “I want to give them hope.”

Steiner is the only physician currently doing the procedure in B.C. and it will be a while before the treatment, which is still experimental in Canada, gets approval to become widely available.

His particular portion of the trial is testing the use of fresh fecal material compared to frozen donations.

If effective, frozen donations would be much easier to store and use.

Donors have to be healthy, like someone who can donate blood, and free of any infection.

The fecal transplant treatment began gaining prominence in the 1990s but it has a much longer history,

“It actually was reported in Chinese medical literature,” said Steiner.

There’s even instructions on the Internet at The Power of Poop for a do-it-yourself fecal transplant at home.

The technique, which basically restores healthy gut microbiota with an injection into the rectum, was tested by the famed Mayo Clinic and elsewhere with a cure rate of 85 to 90 per cent.

“The success rate here at VGH is right around that,” said Steiner, who has treated more than 20 patients.

He admits the technique is a little gross.

“I hear that a lot,” admits Steiner.

But when the alternative is suffering from a bowel infection, he said, “your perspective changes.”

Souce

[VileTouch]

[bwop]

I dig that chicks old school Star Trek uniform she's wearing.