Clostridium difficile also known as C-Diff is an extremely dangerous superbug which takes over the intestines and destroys the bowel of those it infects. It also has the very real potential to cause kidney failure and death.
Caused by the overuse of antibiotics and extremely resistant to even the most powerful drugs, this superbug kills over 300 people per day in the US alone.
With antibiotics useless against the rogue strain of this bacterium, Australian doctors have found a surprisingly simple and amazingly effective cure:
Bacteriotherapy or fecal transplants from the guts of healthy donors directly into the colons of infected patients.
The results are nothing short of remarkable.
Termed “the ultimate probiotic treatment”, a single infusion of a healthy donor’s poop into the infected colon resulted in a cure rate of no less than 97% according to Professor Thomas Borody from the Center for Digestive Diseases in Sydney which so far has conducted over 1500 such transplants.
Robert Silberstein, a 38 year old attorney and father of 3, is one patient quickly cured by this amazing new therapy. Mr. Silberstein had been fighting a clostridium difficile infection involving severe pain and diarrhea for over 6 months with conventional antibiotics to no avail. Faced with either losing his colon or death, Mr. Silberstein was referred to the Center for Digestive Diseases for a fecal transplant.
“I had the procedure done at midday and I woke that night and felt completely normal. I was shocked. I had been so ill for six months and I felt normal. The transplant was amazing. It worked.” said Mr. Silberstein.
Mr. Silberstein’s doctor agreed. “It has cured him,” said Dr. Bernie Hudson, a Royal North Shore Infectious Diseases Specialist.
Dr. Hudson went on to say that he felt that all New South Wales hospitals should become equipped to perform these transplants in order to save more lives.
Hopefully, this wildly successful treatment will quickly make its way to hospitals and become standard of care in the United States given the alarming and rapidly rising cases of clostridium difficile infections.
Avoiding Clostridium Difficile Infections
Avoiding infection with a dangerous superbug such as clostridium difficile obviously involves keeping the gut healthy with beneficial bacteria dominating over any pathogenic strains.
Making and consuming traditionally prepared fermented foods and drinks is an important way to accomplish this goal. To source probiotic cultures for making these healthy foods in your home, please refer to my Resources page.
Sarah, TheHealthyHomeEconomist.com
Source: Deadly Superbug Beaten Using Poo Transplants from Healthy People
Is this means taking someone else’s healthy poop and putting it into the sick persons tummy, then I’ve already seen this done at the hospital I work for. I work for a children’s hospital, so it’s pretty easy to convince the parents to donate some poop. They bring in their poop with their own blender and we have them blend it up with milk. Then we drop a tube (NG – I believe, it wasn’t my patient, so the tube could have been directly in their small intestine….) into the patient’s tummy/intestine (cause who will voluntarily drink that?) and pump in all the healthy poop. Didn’t hear if it worked or not, but we all talked about the therapy for DAYS cause it sounded so gross. 🙂 Seems like it would work and SO much better than all the antibiotic treatments we go through to get rid of that stuff. (Flagyl orally, Flagyl IV with Vancomyacin IV, then Vanco orally….then you’re out of luck. UGH.)
Oh my goodness! No! What the Australian doctors did here was transplant healthy fecal material into the *colon*… not the tummy! I really don’t think that would ever be necessary when clearly, it’s quite beneficial to insert the fecal donation into the colon. Skip the stomach!
I’ve heard of this procedure before, in a study that was curing chronic obesity and other problems with fecal transplants. I am curious, though … HOW? And who do they talk into “donating”? Definitely a “yuck” factor there.
When my husband was in the hospital, on really strong antibiotics for diverticulitis, I read a pamphlet about C. difficile. It basically admitted that C. difficile is caused by being on antibiotics … the antibiotics clear out the gut of healthy bacteria, and the C. difficile, being antibiotic-resistant, is the only thing to survive, so it takes over. Lots of healthy people have C. difficile in small amounts, but it’s kept in check by our other bacteria. That’s why hospital visitors were being asked to be extra careful not to wash hands and so forth … what was harmless to us could kill the patients.
You can bet I freaked out at this news. And my poor husband had lots of digestive problems and diarrhea after he got home from the hospital, too, so I felt awful … maybe he had contracted this bacterium! After a lot of wheedling, though, I managed to get some probiotics into him and he’s begun to improve. I suspect it’s not C. difficile, but simply that his digestive system couldn’t handle many of the foods he commonly eats without bacterial help. For instance, beans — we can’t digest their starch, raffinose, without the help of gut bacteria. So I’ve been giving cultured sour cream with my beans, preserved lemons on my chicken, and a touch of whey snuck into soup once it cools. (He is not a fan of lacto-ferments at all, so I have to be a little stealthy. He’ll eat them, but he’d prefer not to know about it.) And he’s definitely having fewer problems.
Dear Sarah,
Thank you so much for this post! I just pulled my kefir grains out of the fridge and am making a new batch as I type this. I’m also looking forward to making your Hindu Lemonade and homemade sodas. I tend to get lazy and forget about making probiotic beverages but you help keep me on my toes!
Thank you!
Love,
Mary
Wow, this is weird and cool all at the same time.
Wow, that is crazy! I worked in a hospital for years caring for the elderly most of the time and it was amazing how quickly “C-Diff” spread. Often times a whole room of 4 patients would get it one at a time and eventually each would be in their own isolation room. We could always tell if someone should be tested by the way their feces smelled. Gross, I know. Especailly because I had a baby (BFing baby) waiting for me at home. So glad I am a stay at home mum now.
“Ultimate” Probiotic Treatment Beats Deadly Superbug – The Healthy Home Economist http://t.co/ViEcMfq
Sounds really gross and almost unbelievable but very fascinating at the same time. I wonder how fecal matter would not actually contaminate the environment of the new “host”?
I have heard of this before. If I chose to do it I would want to have a healthy breast fed baby close by !
Yeah, exactly. Fecal transplant? I have now heard everything…
Strange “transplant” but very interesting!