This is a fascinating description of a bacterial "transplant."
Here is a quote from the article: We continue to be colonized every day of our lives. “Surrounding us and infusing us is this
cloud of microbes,” said Jeffrey Gordon of Washington University.
Uvealblues
In 2008, Dr. Khoruts, a gastroenterologist at the
University of Minnesota, took on a patient suffering from a vicious gut infection of Clostridium difficile. She was crippled by constant
diarrhea, which had left her in a wheelchair wearing diapers. Dr. Khoruts treated her with an assortment of
antibiotics, but nothing could stop the bacteria. His patient was
wasting away, losing 60 pounds over the course of eight months. “She was just dwindling down the drain, and she probably would have died,” Dr. Khoruts said.
Dr. Khoruts decided his patient needed a transplant. But he didn’t give her a piece of someone else’s intestines, or a stomach, or any other organ. Instead, he gave her some of her husband’s bacteria.
Dr. Khoruts mixed a small sample of her husband’s stool with saline solution and delivered it into her colon. Writing in the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology last month, Dr. Khoruts and his colleagues reported that her diarrhea vanished in a day. Her Clostridium difficile infection disappeared as well and has not returned since.
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