# Poop pills



## twilyth (Oct 22, 2014)

That's right, now the phrase 'eat s***' has a new and healthy meaning.



> _Clostridium difficile, _or more commonly “_C. diff,” _is a nasty bacterium that claims the lives of 14,000 Americans every year. Most at risk are people with conditions requiring prolonged use of antibiotics, which have the unfortunate side effect of wiping out the natural, good bacteria in the colon—thus allowing bad bugs like _C. diff _to multiply unchecked. In many folks, _C. diff_ infection can be treated by halting the original antibiotics and switching to other types of antibiotics. But for some people, that doesn’t work_—C. diff_ is either resistant to treatment or makes a hasty comeback.
> 
> What’s to be done then? Well, researchers have known for some time that taking microbe-rich stool samples from healthy people and transplanting them into _C. diff _patients helps to improve their symptoms. The challenge has been figuring out a safe and effective way to do this that is acceptable to patients and doesn’t involve invasive procedures, such as colonoscopy or nasogastric tubes [1,2]. Could there be a simple solution? To put it more bluntly: what about poop pills?



More at link


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## Tallencor (Oct 22, 2014)

.................................................................................................?


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## Norton (Oct 22, 2014)

This makes complete sense seeing that an intestine basically does the same thing as a wastewater treatment plant... bacteria does the work and when a treatment plant experiences an upset and bacteria get killed off we feed the plant with a load of sludge (bacteria) from a healthy plant or supplement with a freeze dried version of the same thing until the bacteria recover and get back to work.


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## RealNeil (Oct 22, 2014)

Just a spoon full of sugar,...............helps the medicine go down!!

LOL!


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## FordGT90Concept (Oct 22, 2014)

I think I'd rather die of C. diff.


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## natr0n (Oct 22, 2014)

The "doctors" who has this idea can eat shit.
This is unreal.....................


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## twilyth (Oct 22, 2014)

It did help 90% of the 20 people they tried it on.  14 responded on the first round.  The other 6 needed a second round and 4 of those responded.  The second rounders had more serious problems so that's a pretty remarkable success rate.


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## Norton (Oct 22, 2014)

twilyth said:


> It did help 90% of the 20 people they tried it on.  14 responded on the first round.  The other 6 needed a second round and 4 of those responded.  The second rounders had more serious problems so that's a pretty remarkable success rate.



Getting over the "ick!" factor will be tough for some. Where do they think that yummy slice of cheddar or swiss cheese comes from.... milk + magic?


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## FordGT90Concept (Oct 22, 2014)

I suspect it is a suppository so....it's not all bad.


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## DayKnight (Oct 22, 2014)

When your life is on the line, you will take alien poop pill, let alone human poop pills.


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## THE_EGG (Oct 22, 2014)

FordGT90Concept said:


> I suspect it is a suppository so....it's not all bad.


Suppository of wisdom. hehehe.

I think it is actually meant to be taken orally though. Catalyst (a science TV show) did an episode on this stuff which I saw. I was really surprised to see how effective it was. There was some woman that was featured on the show that had a bowel dysfunction thing where she basically would crap without knowing about it (that would truly suck). Anyway she went on a trial with this stuff and had some healthy persons poop put into a capsule (iirc it has to be a specially chosen person's poop, not just some random's poop) and it solved her problem within a month or two.


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## AsRock (Oct 22, 2014)

As a healthy person , can i get payed for taking a dump ?.


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## Norton (Oct 22, 2014)

AsRock said:


> As a healthy person , can i get payed for taking a dump ?.



*I* get paid when you take a dump


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## FordGT90Concept (Oct 22, 2014)

You're a poopsmith?


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## Norton (Oct 22, 2014)

FordGT90Concept said:


> You're a poopsmith?




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Honeymooners#Edward_Lillywhite_.22Ed.22_Norton


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## de.das.dude (Oct 22, 2014)

baby elephants eat their moms poo so that they develop bacteria in their stomachs, which they dont have from birth.


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## erocker (Oct 22, 2014)

I had C. diiff about two years ago. It was hell. Luckily, I responded to antibiotics the first time. Afterwards, I went on a good bacteria pill-popping yogurt eating rampage.


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## MxPhenom 216 (Oct 22, 2014)

Norton said:


> This makes complete sense seeing that an intestine basically does the same thing as a wastewater treatment plant... bacteria does the work and when a treatment plant experiences an upset and bacteria get killed off we feed the plant with a load of sludge (bacteria) from a healthy plant or supplement with a freeze dried version of the same thing until the bacteria recover and get back to work.



Think probiotics, or Prebiotics if you want to promote growth of the bacteria.



erocker said:


> I had C. diiff about two years ago. It was hell. Luckily, I responded to antibiotics the first time. Afterwards, I went on a good bacteria pill-popping yogurt eating rampage.



We just finished a unit on probiotics/prebiotics and talked about C.Diff in my Nutrition class. Stuff is interesting, I can't imagine having C.Diff though.


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## lilhasselhoffer (Oct 22, 2014)

Sensationalism.  These articles are idiots who just realized that sometimes medicines come from weird places. 

We call an MRI that, despite the fact that it should be NMRI, because people fear the word nuclear.
Irradiating food is somehow more dangerous than slathering it in preservatives.
Human waste matter is often used to cheaply fertilize crops in less developed countries.
Humans have been genetically modifying animals and plants, through artificial selection, for centuries. 


A doctor discovers that gut bacteria die-offs often lead to an unhealthy immune system.  The doctor reasonably proposes harvesting good bacteria, and re-introducing them into unhealthy patients.  The only thing that raises people's awareness is that the cheapest and easiest way to harvest these bacteria is via waste matter.  They harvest cultures, then grow them in a controlled environment to create a large enough live culture.  None of this is ground breaking, and none of it deserves the immediate and harsh reaction most people have. 

To put it into perspective, we eat crap often to nourish ourselves.  Beer (and alcohol in general) is yeast crap.  Penicillin works because of crap from fungi that grow on bread.  People pay through the nose for a marsupial's crap (Kopi Luak is what I believe they were) to make coffee out of.  Wake me when they actually suggest eating a pill with crap in it.  This is just an exercise in harvesting bacteria from poo, growing a large culture, and delivering this poo free culture to your intestines.



Edit:

What a crappy writer.  Their own wording for the process:

"A team of NIH-funded researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston have now successfully tested that very strategy: they purified healthy stool samples in a way that concentrated the good bacteria, placed the resulting material into capsules, and then froze the capsules."

Note the words purified, concentrated, and resulting material.  Nowhere does it say they frozen chunks of crap and forced people to eat them.


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## twilyth (Oct 22, 2014)

lilhasselhoffer said:


> This is just an exercise in harvesting bacteria from poo, growing a large culture, and delivering this poo free culture to your intestines.


Actually no.  The procedure isn't that refined yet but they're moving in that direction.


> A team of NIH-funded researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston have now successfully tested that very strategy: they *purified healthy stool samples in a way that concentrated the good bacteria*, placed the resulting material into capsules, and then froze the capsules.


So the pills do actually contain stool samples.  The fecal matter has just been manipulated enough to increase the number of desirable bacteria.  At least that's my reading of it.


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## lilhasselhoffer (Oct 22, 2014)

twilyth said:


> Actually no.  The procedure isn't that refined yet but they're moving in that direction.
> 
> So the pills do actually contain stool samples.  The fecal matter has just been manipulated enough to increase the number of desirable bacteria.  At least that's my reading of it.



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/poop-pill-may-treat-stubborn-deadly-c-diff-bacteria/

Note the dates on this thing, October 3rd *2013*.  You're telling me that in a year they haven't managed to move from refined samples to laboratory grown cultures?  Sounds kinda sketchy to me, and seems to prove my point that this is sensational journalism and not scientific news.  

An excerpt from the CBS article:
"It takes 24 to 34 capsules to fit the bacteria needed for a treatment, and patients down them in one sitting. The pills make their way to the colon and seed it with the normal variety of bacteria."  

That is using poo encapsulated in a pill and swallowing it unrefined.  Your article suggests they purified the stool, which would by definition remove the waste matter and deliver concentrated bacterial colonies.  I am at a loss as to how bacteria could be concentrated without either distillation or delivering them onto a growth medium.  If you're already getting them to a growth medium you just keep the colonies growing, and don't have to harvest new poop.  Sounds better than a scientist dedicated to washing feces samples constantly to grow the appropriate bacteria.


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## twilyth (Oct 22, 2014)

You might be right about the fact that there is no fecal matter in the pills - from your article:


> Donor stool, usually from a relative, is processed in the lab to take out food and extract the bacteria and clean it. It is packed into triple-coated gel capsules so they won't dissolve until they reach the intestines.
> 
> "*There's no stool left - just stool bugs. These people are not eating poop,*" and there are no smelly burps because the contents aren't released until they're well past the stomach, Louie said.



But as for the sensationalism issue, my article is from the NIH Director's blog.  So this isn't your standard tabloid journalism.  If something is reported there, it may not be the most current news, but it's always newsworthy.


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## THE_EGG (Oct 22, 2014)

erocker said:


> I had C. diiff about two years ago. It was hell. Luckily, I responded to antibiotics the first time. Afterwards, I went on a good bacteria pill-popping yogurt eating rampage.


Back in 2006 when I was still in high school I had rotavirus(?), I think it was called that and yeh, I basically lived in the bathroom for a week. Explosive, burning diarrhoea that would usually occur every 5-10 minutes without me knowing until it was too late. It was literally the worst experience in my life, I couldn't imagine having to deal with that as an everyday occurrence like some people have to. I preferred having Influenza A - also during high school but in 2007 - which lasted about 2-3 weeks. At least I didn't have to live in the bathroom with that one.

My only concern with this whole poop pill thing is the potential for other diseases to be spread (although, I'd imagine this would be highly unlikely as the poop would no doubt be screened and/or treated).


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## 64K (Oct 22, 2014)

As was mentioned above, the bacteria could be grown on a medium a little more palatable and put in a pill unless there's some reason why it won't grow on anything but feces. I would still take it anyway if I needed it. I've been on antibiotics for a week and a half before and one time it turned my tongue black. Freaked me out but the doctor said that the antibiotics had also killed the good bacteria in my mouth allowing undesirable bacteria to multiply. Prescription was to eat yogurt and it worked after a while.


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## Sasqui (Oct 22, 2014)

Supposedly, there is a link between allergies and antibiotics killing off good bugs.  Poop to the rescue.


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## RejZoR (Oct 25, 2014)

It's just a chocolate, it's just a chocolate, it's just a chocolate...


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## AphexDreamer (Oct 25, 2014)

These guys knew all along.


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## erocker (Oct 25, 2014)

Second harvest!


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## OneMoar (Oct 25, 2014)

this thread is shit


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## Nosada (Oct 25, 2014)

Actually, these pills are a refinement of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fecal_bacteriotherapy

Something that has been proven to be VERY effective in cases where medication has been found lacking.


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## Norton (Oct 25, 2014)

RejZoR said:


> It's just a chocolate, it's just a chocolate, it's just a chocolate...





Spoiler:  Could be coffee



Kinda nutty!


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## Arjai (Oct 29, 2014)

I eat a Yogurt nearly every day! Sometimes, two!

It made my last run of Antibiotics, cut my leg crashing my bike, uneventful. 

I started eating Yogurt, cheap ass stuff, about 2 1/2 years ago. My poo don't stink! Well, sometimes when I am forced to eat something I don't want because I am hungry and broke...i.e. Mission food! 

Anyways, I love Yogurt.


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## twilyth (Oct 30, 2014)

One of the beneficial bacteria may have been discovered - https://www.sciencenews.org/article/harmless-bacterium-edges-out-intestinal-germ



> Gut infections from the bacterium _Clostridium difficile _can be fought with a closely related but harmless microbe known as _C. scindens_. The friendly bacterium combats infection in mice by converting molecules produced in the liver into forms that inhibit _C. difficile _growth, researchers report October 22 in _Nature._
> 
> _C. scindens _also appears to protect people from infection, the researchers found in a preliminary study in humans.
> 
> The new findings could begin a path to the next generation of therapies using gut bacteria, says Alexander Khoruts, a gastroenterologist at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.


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## Vario (Oct 30, 2014)

Whenever I eat questionable restaurant food I usually eat a container of greek yogurt afterwards to populate my gut with good bacteria.  Haven't had food poisoning in a few years.  Probably coincidence but atleast the yogurt tastes good and has a lot of protein.


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## Bansaku (Oct 30, 2014)

Sasqui said:


> Supposedly, there is a link between allergies and antibiotics killing off good bugs.  Poop to the rescue.



Not just antibiotics. Lysol is actually a huge culprit in children developing allergies. Ok, not Lysol itself rather mothers who basically sterilize everything; Allergies are almost unheard of in the developing world, where often they are living in amongst their own poop.


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## Norton (Oct 31, 2014)

Bansaku said:


> Not just antibiotics. Lysol is actually a huge culprit in children developing allergies. Ok, not Lysol itself rather mothers who basically sterilize everything; Allergies are almost unheard of in the developing world, where often they are living in amongst their own poop.



Quaternary Ammonia Compounds (aka Quats) are the true nasty for bacteria (good ones and bad ones):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_ammonium_cation

They are in all kinds of products as a sanitizing agent. A large dose of concentrated quats can kill *ALL* of the biology in a wastewater treatment plant within a few hours!


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