This is gross and interesting. OpenBiome, especially. “That is an absolutely critical piece of the puzzle,” Knight said, since, for all the enthusiasm, researchers have yet to understand how, exactly, the treatment works. Like Jamil, most patients have undergone antibiotic therapy recently for another condition. Those antibiotics “start killing off good bacteria, then C. diff takes over and produces a toxin that causes the diarrhea,” Edmond said. Fecal transplantation reestablishes a healthier community of bugs that seems to drive out the C. diff or hold it in check. The approach is both holistic and rudimentary. “It’s a crude tool we’re using to repair the damage done by another crude tool, which is antibiotics,” Alm said. Part of OpenBiome’s goal is to understand what usually enables fecal transplants to succeed—and what sometimes causes them to fail. In particular, the group is asking whether certain combinations of bugs, or certain genetic relationships between donor and recipient, are integral to the cure.
Posted on: Fri, 05 Sep 2014 04:25:27 +0000
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