Fecal donor microbes remain in recipients for months or years after transplantation and help treat recurrent Clostridium difficile infections, according to a paper published in Biofilms and Microbiomes.
Fecal Microbiota Transplant, an increasingly common treatment for recurrent C. diff, involves transplanting fecal matter from a healthy donor into a patient who has not responded to antibiotics.
Researchers from the University of Alabama at Birmingham developed a method that uses detection of single nucleotide variations in microbial genomes to identify related microbes. The researchers used the method to determine the fate of donor microbial strains in recipients. They examined seven patients
The study shows donor microbial strains persisted in five recipients for three to six months after an FMT. In two patients, certain donor microbial strains persisted as long as two years after the transplant procedure.
The paper helps explain why FMT has such a high rate of success as a recurrent C. diff treatment. The procedure has a success rate of 90 percent.