Tag: faecal

Imperial in the news: building bowel bacteria

Over the past few years, there have been major breakthroughs in treating dangerous, and sometimes embarrassing, bowel diseases such as Clostridium difficile, which causes severe diarrhoea and in some extreme cases can be fatal. Antibiotics are of little benefit as they often kill off other bacteria, allowing the disease to thrive. One treatment conducted in the UK involves taking parts of the patient’s poo and transplanting it back, creating more competition for resources, which has seen C. difficle has lose out in 90 per cent of cases.

However, this treatment has been refined, reports the BBC, into selecting the bacteria from faecal matter that can defeat the diseases, and it has been even more successful in lab trials than the current transplant procedure.