Intestinal disease tests poop transplantation itself

- I usually receive emails several times a week with a request for a stool transplant. Some patients have IBS, upset stomach, some have other intestinal diseases and have read about the treatment on the internet. Then we are forced to say no because we only perform stool transplants on those diseases for research purposes, says Robert Brummer, professor of gastroenterology at Örebro University.

See the clip above to hear more about the risks.

The Gastrointestinal Association has also had contact with IBS / IBD patients who have been denied a stool transplant and who then took matters into their own hands.

- Sometimes we get calls from people who have done the treatment themselves. We do not support this, it can be life-threatening. We do not know if they received it unofficially from the health service, visited secret clinics or read how to do it on Facebook, says Linn Inganäs, who is responsible for communications at Margtarmförbundet.

The only approved patient group for fecal transplantation in healthcare is Clostridioides difficile. After antibiotic treatment, these patients suffer from the bloody and sometimes fatal diarrheal disease. They need to get someone else's gut bacteria to get well. The transplant takes place from a controlled donor's poop that is stored frozen and thawed and given via a tube in the nose or rectum or via pills that are swallowed. More than 90 percent recover within a few days.

There is intensive research into whether stool transplants can have the same good effect on other intestinal diseases, such as IBS (upset stomach) and IBD diseases such as Crohn's disease. Apart from a Norwegian study, all other studies so far have had disappointing results in the long run, according to Robert Brummer.

- So far, we have not cracked the code which donor suits which patient, what type of transplant we should do and how often, says Robert Brummer.

As it has been shown that patients with many different types of ailments seem to have a disturbed intestinal flora, research is also underway into fecal transplantation that can help with, for example, cancer and neurological diseases. However, there is still no conclusive evidence that it has an effect. Perhaps the disturbed bacterial composition in the intestines is not the cause of the disease, but has been changed by becoming ill.

Donors who donate their feces are checked for many infectious diseases before the transplant. There have been isolated deaths in the United States when patients have received multi-resistant bacteria that have not been controlled in the poop.

See more in the Science World's summer prize "Gold in your intestines" July 20 at 20.00 on SVT or in SVTplay.