Faecal ‘cure’ to fight intestinal diseases

FMT IS nothing but transferring healthy faecal matter to a diseased person.

The use of faecal microbiota transplants or FMTs is becoming popular as the body requires bacteria for metabolism. If they are not regulated, it might lead to unscreened and potentially dangerous faecal samples flooding the market.

The colon or the large intestine has a large amount of good bacteria which help in maintaining good health. Diseases and health problems are mainly caused by the imbalance between good and bad bacteria. If bacterial flora cannot be maintained properly by probiotic therapy like capsules and powdered bacteria, faecal extract from a healthy individual are transplanted to the patient.

Dr Vimalakar Reddy, gastroenterologist, said “FMT is nothing but transferring healthy faecal matter to a diseased person. Faecal transplantation is mainly successful in Clostridium difficile infection (CDI or Cdiff) cases where severe diarrhoea is the common symptom. It cannot treat inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) like ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease.”

Dr Reddy added that if left unchecked, it could even aggravate the sickness. FMT resolves symptoms in 85 per cent of patients when compared to antibiotics which have a success rate of 20 per cent to 30 per cent.

Explaining the process, Dr B. Ravi Shankar, gastroenterologist, said “People have to undergo screening tests for HIV, HIB and HIC viruses and others before the transplant. Stool is collected and homogenised by mixing it with water. Vegetable and particulate matter from the stool is removed. The liquid stool mixed with water is injected into colon of the patient by colonoscopy. Over a period of time, the good bacteria transplanted into the patient proliferates in the intestine causing abnormal flora to disappear, giving space to normal flora to develop in the colon.”