frozen poop pills

[dragon]

I've heard of fecal matter transplants before but there's something about swallowing poop that I don't know about.

The healing powers of poop are now available in pill form — and a new study has found that just two days of the treatment can cure a dangerous infection that kills 14,000 Americans per year.

The pills take the place of fecal transplants, which have gained credibility in recent years as a method of treating Clostridium difficile infection, but which require delivery by enema or a tube down the digestive system. Scientists say the pills, which contain filtered, healthy fecal matter, offer a cheap, convenient and safer way to “make the medicine go down.”
Encapsulating Excreta

The pills, created by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, start with stool from healthy donors in a saline solution. The contents are filtered to extract helpful bacteria, and the cocktail is then piped into pill capsules and subsequently frozen. Patients pop the pills straight out of the freezer, where they can be stored for up to 250 days.

In a small and preliminary trial, the pills cured the diarrhea symptoms in 19 out of 20 people with mild to moderate C. difficile infections. Each patient popped 30 of the pills over a two-day period, and their bowel movements fell from a median of 5 per day to 1 per day eight weeks later. Fourteen of the 20 patients were cured after the first two-day treatment, and five others — sicker than the rest — were cured after a second two-day, 30-pill treatment.

Further, not a single participant showed adverse side effects due to the pills. Researchers published their findings Saturday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
What’s Next?

The team from Boston isn’t the first group to put poop in pill form, but they were the first to rigorously test the oral treatment’s efficacy. The next step is to replicate the same success on a larger scale. And although the pills aren’t marketed, the authors of the study are making them available to qualified patients without participating in clinical trials, the New York Times reports.

The treatment may sound like a bitter pill to swallow, but it’s certainly better than the alternative.

link

[Borgholio]

I dunno if I can swallow that shit...

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Eat shit and live?

[Purple]

I will take a portion of the death instead, if that is ok with you.

[Darth Nostril]

That's perfectly fine, hell take a double portion right now no need to wait.
For anyone with more than two braincells to rub together however this looks like it has serious potential (for the record you don't actually eat shit, the pills contain the harvested healthy gut flora from carefully screened donors.)

Current gut flora transplants involves tubes inserted, flushings out and infusions (as mentioned in the article) this new treatment involves just popping multiple pills a day for a couple of days. While the enema & feeding tube methods aren't particularily traumatic they may be unpleasant to endure and involve a hospital visit whereas the so called 'poop pill' involves nothing more than washing down a pill with a glass of water.
So far gut flora transplants are being used as treatment for CDI, colitis & IBS; although recent research has indicated that imbalanced gut flora may be the cause of Crohn's - too much 'bad' flora not enough 'good' - in which case this becomes a possible treatment.

Off the top of my head I recall that Alyeska & JLTucker have said they have been diagnosed from Crohn's so I put this to them - would you take 60 pills containing harvested healthy gut bacteria over a 48 hour period if it meant alleviation of your suffering for at least a month?

[Knife]

But the article is about C diff, and I'd rather eat the Flagyl than a poop pill. As far as a transplant of gut flora, don't know man. Willing to read into it, but it's not my specialty.