Genius Foods

person to another may not be pleasant to think about,
imagine for a second you had an infection called C. difficile.
A pathogenic and antibiotic-resistant bacteria that causes
profound diarrhea and intestinal inflammation, Clostridium
difficile results in half a million hospitalizations and thirty
thousand deaths annually, according to the latest estimates
from the CDC. Highly opportunistic, C. difficile is
contagious and already present in 2 to 5 percent of the
human adult population. Antibiotic use is a major risk factor
for C. difficile because these drugs decimate healthy gut
populations, allowing the pathogen to exploit weaknesses in
the microbial community until it becomes a full-blown
infection.
In 2013, scientists wanted to see if transplanting the
microbiome of a healthy person into one with such an
infection could reestablish order and help defeat C. difficile
naturally. Performed via fecal microbiota transplant (FMT),
where the bacteria-rich stool of a healthy person is
transplanted into the GI tract of a sick person, the procedure
was found to be more than 90 percent successful–an
astonishing and unprecedented cure rate.
The procedure typically requires invasive and
uncomfortable colonoscopies, enemas, and even nasal tubes
to deliver the healthy stool. However, researchers have
recently refined the delivery method to frozen pills, and
have found them to be just as safe and effective as
traditional transplant techniques. Oh, the sweet smell of
progress!