Featured Article Academic Journal Main Category: GastroIntestinal / Gastroenterology Also Included In: Infectious Diseases / Bacteria / Viruses;MRSA / Drug Resistance;Biology / Biochemistry Article Date: 11 Jan 2013 - 9:00 PST

Current ratings for: Artificial "Poop" Cures Gut Superbug C. Difficile

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The synthetic stool, called RePOOPulate, is the creation of Emma Allen-Vercoe, a microbiologist at the University of Guelph in Canada.

Allen-Vercoe is also the senior author of a paper describing a study of the artificial "super-probiotic" poop that was published in the first issue of a new online, peer-reviewed science journal Microbiome on Wednesday.

As a consequence, the bacterium overpopulates the gut, producing nasty toxins, when healthy, less resistant, gut bacteria are killed off by antibiotics.

Outbreaks resulting from recurring infections of C. difficile tend to occur where lots of people who are either sick or vulnerable to illness are under one roof, such as in hospitals and residential care homes.

For example, one study, reported at a conference in the US in October 2012, showed how treating patients with donated human stool mixed with water through a nasogastric tube or colonoscopy resulted in a complete and fast recovery with no negative side effects in 43 out of 49 of them.

But Allen-Vercoe says in a press statement, while stool transplants using fecal matter from healthy people is an effective therapy for recurring C. difficile infections, they carry the risk of introducing other unknown pathogens, which potentially "puts people at risk for future disease".

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Artificial "Poop" Cures Gut Superbug C. Difficile