Many people go to the hospital for a certain reason and
contract specific nosocomial infections that make their stay longer. Most
elderly patients catch the bacteria named Clostridium difficile. It will cause
severe diarrhea and sometimes bloody stools. This infection can be lethal when
the person has many concomitant diseases. What is the main cause of this
disease? The answer is antibiotics. Antibiotics kill pathogenic bacteria and
beneficial bacteria in the gut. This leaves the gut empty from bacterial
population and put us at risk to pathogenic bacteria colonization. C. difficile
takes the advantage of this empty place, to grow and colonize the gut. Usually,
physicians give other types of antibiotics to kill C. difficile. But killing it
by the same mean that caused the disease doesn’t make sense. So physicians
devised a new way to treat this infection. Giving the patient fecal transplant.
Yes you have read correctly! This is not a typo. The treatment is to give the
person human feces. Feces are given through a nasogastric or by enema, or by
pills. A family member usually donates these feces. Imagine yourself ingesting
the feces of your mother or your brother! These feces contain beneficial bacteria
that restore the balance of the gut and inhibit the proliferation of C.
difficile and other pathogenic bacteria. And strangely they are a huge success
in treating the patient and inhibiting the recurrence of the infection. Would
you take these pills if you were infected? If yes, do you agree with “you are
what you eat”?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131004105253.htm
