Thursday, March 12, 2009

Save a Colon

You can do your part to save a person's lower intestine...by donating your feces. Or so I learned reading this paragraph in a Wikipedia article about a bacterial infection that can cause horrific diarrhea (I'm not even getting into why I'm looking at this):

Fecal bacteriotherapy, a procedure related to probiotic research, has been suggested as a potential cure for the disease. It involves infusion of bacterial flora acquired from the feces of a healthy donor in an attempt to reverse bacterial imbalance responsible for the recurring nature of the infection. It has a success rate of nearly 95% according to some sources.

Say what?? I click the link to read this:

The procedure itself involves a 5 to 10 day treatment with enemas, made of bacterial flora from feces of a healthy donor (who needs to be tested for a wide array of bacterial and parasitic agents). The enemas are prepared and administered in a hospital environment to ensure all necessary precautions. The probiotic infusion can also be administered through a nasogastral tube, delivering the bacteria directly to the small intestine. The two methods can be combined to achieve the best result. Regular checkups are required up to a year following the procedure.

Wow. Just...wow. I mean, this makes complete sense; take the healthy bacteria from the gut of someone who has plenty of them, and put them in the gut of someone who doesn't and is suffering because of it. Still, I never would have thought that I would live to see the day when you could become a fecal donor.

1 comments:

Nat-Wu said...

I donate feces to the library every day!