Oct 3, 2013 9:26 PM by Connie Murphy

Pills made from poop cure serious gut infections



Recently, studies have shown that fecal transplants - giving infected people stool from a healthy donor - can restore that balance. But they're given through expensive, invasive procedures like colonoscopies or throat tubes. Doctors also have tried giving the stool through enemas but the treatment doesn't always take hold.


Dr. Thomas Louie, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Calgary, devised a better way - a one-time treatment custom-made for each patient.

Donor stool, usually from a relative, is processed in the lab to take out food and extract the bacteria and clean it. It is packed into triple-coated gel capsules so they won't dissolve until they reach the intestines.

"There's no stool left - just stool bugs. These people are not eating poop," and there are no smelly burps because the contents aren't released until they're well past the stomach, Louie said.

Days before starting the treatment, patients are given an antibiotic to kill the C-diff. On the morning of the treatment, they have an enema so "the new bacteria coming in have a clean slate," Louie said.



Margaret Corbin, 69, a retired nurse's aide from Calgary, told of the misery of C-diff.

"It lasted for two years. It was horrible. I thought I was dying. I couldn't eat. Every time I ate anything or drank water I was into the bathroom," she said. "I never went anywhere, I stayed home all the time."

With her daughter as the donor, she took pills made by Louie two years ago, and "I've been perfectly fine since," Corbin said.


"The approach that Dr. Louie has is completely novel - no one else has done this," he said. "I am optimistic that this type of preparation will make these procedures much easier for patients and for physicians."

The treatment now must be made fresh for each patient so the pills don't start to dissolve at room temperature, because their water content would break down the gel coating. Minnesota doctors are testing freezing stool, which doesn't kill the bacteria, so it could be stored and shipped anywhere a patient needed it.

"You could have a universal donor in Minnesota provide a transplant for someone in Florida. That's where we're heading," Donskey said.


The hope is "we could administer that as a probiotic in a pill form," Donskey said.


"This approach, to me, has wide application in medicine," he said. "So it's not just about C-diff."




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