The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last week approved the first pill containing bacteria from human feces, a treatment to treat dangerous intestinal infections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Seres Therapeutics’ pill, which is produced by processing feces from healthy donors, essentially simplifies and standardizes the process of “fecal transplantation,” in which material isolated by colonoscopy from healthy individuals is transferred into the patient’s colon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fecal transplantation often treats chronic diarrhea from the notorious bacterium Clostridium difficile, which is relatively common in the elderly with underlying diseases and is often not treated with antibiotics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Seres Therapeutics initially uses ethyl alcohol to kill viruses and active bacteria in stool. What remains are the resistant spores of certain beneficial bacteria, mainly Firmicutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to the company, these bacteria antagonize C.defficile, preventing them from establishing themselves in the gut, and they also change the composition of bile acids, making the gut environment more hostile to C.defficile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the company’s final clinical trial, which involved 180 volunteers, the pill reduced the risk of reinfection from the bacteria from 40 to 12 percent after initial antibiotic treatment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Seres’ pill is the first of its kind to get the green light, but the FDA has already approved a similar treatment from Ferring Pharmaceuticals that is given as an enema.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The material from which both treatments are made comes from donors who have passed medical tests and are screened for dozens of viruses, bacteria and parasites. The FDA warns, however, that the risk of contamination with pathogens cannot be ruled out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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