This story is about very serious science — and poop. A doctor at the University of Calgary have found a way to create pills from fresh human feces that could act as a much easier fecal transplant option for patients suffering from Clostridium difficile, or C-diff which kills 14,000 Americans every year.
The poop pills were developed by Dr. Thomas Louie at the University of Calgary. Each pill can be made to order for patients with C-diff if antibiotics fail to treat the infection. C-diff infections have been successfully treated with fecal transplants for some time, and researchers at the University of Guelph have even developed synthetic poop to be used for this purpose.
Although the idea of swallowing a pill made from poop may be disgusting, you can’t argue with results. The poop pills were used to treat 27 patients with C-diff and all 27 of them recovered from the infection.
To make this sound a little less gross, you might be happy to know that there’s no actual poop in these pills, just bacteria derived from a donor sample that usually comes from a relative. That bacteria is triple-coated in a gel that keeps the bacteria contained until it reaches your intestines.
Unfortunately it does take 24 to 34 pills which must be taken in one sitting to deliver an effective dose. Poop pills or not, that’s a lot to swallow.
(via Yahoo News, image via Kim)
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