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Journalism of Courage
So you thought your stool is a waste? Well it is not and it can even save somebody’s life. A person suffering from recurrent clostridium difficile infections can greatly benefit from a treatment called fecal microbiota transplantation.
Clostridium difficile colitis is an infectious diarrhea which may cause bloating and diarrhea, with abdominal pain, which may become severe. Though it can be treated by anti-biotics, relapses of CDI have been reported in up to 20% cases. It kills approx 14,000 people a year in the United States.
Coming back to the prodedure, a fecal microbiota preparation using stool from a healthy donor is transplanted into the colon of the patient. The stool is basically blended with saline, strained and re-introduced into the colon via enema.
The stool has almost 60 per cent bacteria, mostly alive. The idea behind fecal transfers is that restoring colonies of healthy bacteria can either dilute or crowd out these harmful strains, according to Marie Myung-Ok Lee in her opinion piece for New York Times.
While the stool donation can save somebody’s life, not everyone is eligible to make the donations. You need to be extremely healthy to be able to make the donations. Donors reportedly can make up to $13,000 per year.
Although FMT is being researched as a treatment for a variety of diseases, C. difficile is the only disease that has been carefully explored and has robust clinical evidence supporting its use.
You can donate your stool via OpenBiome, a public stool bank, based in Medford, Massachusetts.
Want to get an idea of how fecal microbiota transplantation is done? Watch this video
