SO! For this blog I found an article that talks about having feces in a pill! Isn't that just appealing?!
Well for those who suffer from Clostridum difficile, " a bacterial infection that causes diarrhea and fever" and responsible for 14,000 US citizen deaths, would much rather take a pill filled with feces rather than the current techniques in killing the bacteria.
As of now, the bacteria is killed with fecal transplants of donor feces by "enemas, colonoscopies, or nasal tubes that run directly to the gut" (OUCH!). The donor feces have healthy microbes that gets rid of C. difficile and promotes growth of good bacteria.
So, TECHNICALLY these patients are not literally digesting a pill with feces, but the microbes extracting for a feces donor are put into the pill. The next step is to stop asking healthy individuals for fecal samples (LOL). Therefore, the idea of make a pill that uses bacteria grown in a laboratory is not far fetched; only issue is how much it would cost to get a laboratory up and running with all the work that goes behind this research.
"As Tom Moore, a physician and infectious-disease specialist in Wichita, Kansas, puts it: 'It'll be difficult to compete with the ready availability and very cheap costs of human poop.' "
What do you all think about this method of delivering healthy microbes to the human gut? Would it just be better to stick with what we have been doing?
Click the link to read more about it
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=feces-filled-pill-stops-gut-infection
Hey, I wrote about this too!
ReplyDeleteI KNOW!! I noticed it right after making all my comments on everyone's blog. I started to write on yours to tell you the same thing, but now you know! :)
DeleteI'd rather take a pill then have to have someone else's feces run through my colon or up my nose! It would be more expensive to produce a pill with the bacteria in it versus performing these procedures, but the thought of someone else's poop going through me is a little unsettling, and disgusting. I think people would be more comfortable taking a pill, and it would be easier then having to set up a doctors appointment for the procedure.
ReplyDeleteI believe the same thing. I hope this is a method they decide to go through with even if it is expensive. Maybe they'll see that it's worth it due to people's same response as us.
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