New research shows a fecal microbiota transplant (FMT) could cure Clostridium difficile (C. diff) infections and even eliminate populations of mulit-drug resistant bacteria in the body and gastrointestinal tract.
The method successfully cured C. diff in a 66 year old man that suffered from quadriplegia and other conditions causing him to need a ventilator, feeding tube, and catheter, the American Society for Microbiology reported. Within the first week of his diagnosis, the patient was treated with antibiotics but severely relapsed once the course was done; a variety of multi-drug resistant organisms were also found in the patient.
The patient was treated with an FMT, and the C. diff infection never returned following the procedure. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) did recolonize his urinary tract a few months later, but other microbes did not return.
FMTs use fecal matter from healthy donors to restore "good bacteria" to the digestive system. It has been demonstrated to cure C. diff at a rate of 90 percent or higher, which is far superior to antibiotic treatments. The technique may have been used as far back as 1,700 years ago, and has been a common treatment for pseudomembranous colitis since the 1950s.
"Patients, especially those in long-term facilities, receive numerous courses of antibiotics that almost invariably result in both colonization and infections from multi-drug resistant organisms, and in the end with bacteria resistant to all antibiotics," said coauthor Gonzalo Ballon-Landa, also an infectious disease specialist at Scripps Mercy Hospital. "This paper indicates that replenishing the normal gut flora and keeping these patients off antibiotics can result in the disappearance of multi-drug resistant organisms from the patients' bodies and thus potentially save their lives."
The findings were published in a recent edition of the Journal of Clinical Microbiology.
