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One patient has died and another became seriously ill after fecal transplants inadvertently seeded their innards with a multi-drug resistant bacterial infection, the Food and Drug Administration warned Thursday.
The cases highlight the grave risks of what some consider a relatively safe procedure. They also call attention to the mucky issues of federal oversight for the experimental transplants, which the FDA has struggled to regulate. In its warning Thursday, the agency announced new protections for trials and experimental uses of the procedure.
The FDA shared minimal details from the deadly transplants. Its warning only noted that the cases involved two patients who were immunocompromised prior to the experimental transplants and received stool from the same donor. Subsequent to the transplant, the patients developed invasive infections from an E. coli strain that was resistant to a wide variety of antibiotics in the penicillin and cephalosporin groups. The E. coli strain carried a drug-defeating enzyme called an extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL) [open, DOI: 10.1155/2012/625170] [DX], which generally cleaves a ring common to all the chemical structures of those antibiotics. When unnamed researchers who administered the transplant looked back at the donor stool, they found that the stool contained an identical ESBL-producing E. coli.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday June 18 2019, @04:20AM (9 children)
I understand that for people with recurrent C-diff it's a life changer.
As a treatment for obesity... Hell yes I'd try this, if it had a 50% or better success rate after 24 months.. Today I'm honestly considering having someone cut me open and surgically reroute part of my intestine to a different part of my stomach. To say I'm open minded is an understatement.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 18 2019, @11:34AM
For obesity: try gastric surgery (band/gastrectomy). I have seen this work miracles.
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Tuesday June 18 2019, @12:28PM (3 children)
There is no mystery to losing weight. You burn more calories than you take in. Stop eating garbage and exercise and you will lose weight. There I saved you from surgery.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday June 18 2019, @02:51PM (2 children)
Thank you so much for your relevant and salient advice. There is no chance whatsoever that I might have tried that before considering committing a double digit percentage of my annual income to a painful major abdominal surgery and a lifetime of medical complications.</sarcasm>
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Tuesday June 18 2019, @05:03PM (1 child)
You must be some sort of medical anomaly if diet and exercise do not cause weight loss.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday June 18 2019, @05:42PM
I have a hypothesis on that. Some cars get 50 miles per gallon, and some cars get 15. I'm the former. I can maintain my body weight on a 1500 calorie per day diet while clicking in 10K steps a day. I have to get down to around 1200 to move the needle. When I reduce my intake that low I'm freezing (cold) all the time and so lethargic it's unsustainable.
Anecdote: In high school I had jaw surgery and my jaw was wired closed for months. Straight liquid diet, marching band practice twice a week plus games on Friday, and I lost less than 5 pounds. No, I wasn't tossing back milkshakes all day long.
Infuriating.
(Score: 2) by OrugTor on Tuesday June 18 2019, @01:12PM
Please don't. You will lose weight, put most of it back on and spend the rest of your life warding off deficiency diseases.
Gastric surgery is bad medicine. Treating an eating disorder with GI mutilation makes as much sense as castrating a sex addict.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 18 2019, @01:13PM
Having had two relatives that had lap band surgery and seeing how it devastated the life of one and surgical complications in the other, I would put surgery at the bottom of the list of things to try to reverse obesity.Aside from radical changes in diet such as a 5-2 system where you fast for two days, eat well for 5, there is gastric balloon therapy which requires no surgery and is easily reversible, unlike surgical options. A balloon is orally inserted into your stomach and filled with saline solution to reduce the volume of food which can be eaten.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 18 2019, @02:36PM (1 child)
Don't stuff so much food into yourself instead?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 18 2019, @09:59PM
Doesn't work for Americans.