The practice of using fecal transplants to treat severe and sometimes fatal infections — including recurrent Clostridium difficile — is on the rise, but more research on the long-term effects of the treatment is necessary, according to experts who published an editorial in The BMJ.
The editorial was penned by Tim Spector, MD, a professor of genetic epidemiology at King's College London, and Rob Knight, PhD, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of California San Diego.
According to Drs. Spector and Knight, more than 7,000 fecal transplants have been performed with a success rate of 85 percent, and few adverse effects have been reported. Additionally, the transplants appear to be relatively safe for elderly patients and those with an impaired immune system.
"As well as the obvious risks of infection [reduced by screening], there are longer term potential risks, and two anecdotal reports exist of patients with C. difficile who recovered from their disease but then gained substantial weight, perhaps from the microbiomes of their overweight donors," wrote the authors.
Other studies suggest the procedure can transfer microbes to a new host that can cause anxiety or depression.
"These risks suggest that fecal transplantation should be carefully monitored and donors followed up, but even with all these caveats it is clearly better than further antibiotics for treating conditions like C. difficile," wrote the authors.
Dr. Spector and Dr. Knight concluded their editorial by urging the medical community to increase the number of long-term trials and monitoring procedures for fecal transplants, to prevent problems down the road for the recipients.
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How South Seminole Hospital cut C. diff infections in half