Latest news with #fecaltransplant
CBC
21-06-2025
- Health
- CBC
Anorexia is normally treated with therapy. Now a Canadian team is trying the gut
Social Sharing This story is part of CBC Health's Second Opinion, a weekly analysis of health and medical science news emailed to subscribers on Saturday mornings. If you haven't subscribed yet, you can do that by clicking here. Anorexia is a life-threatening eating disorder that can manifest as an intense preoccupation on weight loss. It's classified as a mental illness and normally treated with talk therapy, known as family-based therapy, but that's only effective for about half of the mostly women and girls who have it. Those who don't improve may go to hospital and get locked into a relentless cycle of gaining weight and recovering from malnourishment, followed by weight loss and damage to organs, including changes to the brain from starvation. Now, Canadian researchers are testing a new approach, tapping into the growing understanding of the gut-brain connection. They're going to try treating teens with fecal transplants, to change the bacteria in their gut. "We know that once the symptoms set in and the brain changes, it's really hard to change the course, so if we can intervene early in the adolescent years, we have the best chance," said Dr. Jennifer Couturier, a child psychiatrist and associate professor of psychiatry at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont. In fecal microbial transplants, a small sample of stool from a healthy person is purified to concentrate the beneficial bacteria minus the waste. The microbiome is then put in a capsule, which the recipient takes for therapeutic purposes. Couturier and her team have Health Canada approval to run a randomized clinical trial in an initial group of 20 females aged 12 to 17 diagnosed with anorexia. They will either take oral capsules along with standard family-based treatment to stabilize nutrition and avoid the harmful effects of starvation or family-based treatment alone. McMaster's own stool bank Fecal transplants have been tested in a small handful of adults with anorexia, including one who restored her weight. In this trial, the McMaster researchers will use the university's own stool bank of donations. Dr. Nikhil Pai, a gastroenterologist at McMaster and a co-investigator on the trial, credited the university's contributions for funding the research and starting the pediatric stool bank. "This is not affiliated with any company," Pai said. "We developed this entirely in-house using carefully screened pediatric donors." Pai said the screening checks for infectious diseases, similar to how blood donations are assessed. Staff at the stool bank then prepare the capsules, which can't be mass produced. WATCH | Exploring the power of poop: There are a few reasons Pai and some other doctors are optimistic participants will benefit. One comes from animal studies. Researchers transplanted gut microbes from humans with anorexia to normal mice models, and found the mice reduced their food intake as if anorexic. Then, when gut microbes from healthy humans were given, the effect reversed. Secondly, young guts are subject to change. Pai said the gut microbiome is malleable in children and teens. "It actually is a very different landscape in adolescence, where if you can make a change, you not only may see some improvement in terms of outcomes for anorexia nervosa in the short term, but … the sustained response," Pai said. Butterflies in the stomach With every meal, trillions of gut bacteria turn breakfast, lunch and dinner into molecules called metabolites that affect the brain. Pai, who also works at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, said large population-based studies show a few types of bacteria can have an outsized effect on the brain through the gut-brain axis, a connection between the two. "When we feel a bit nervous, sometimes we feel butterflies in our stomach," as a symptom of the nervousness, Pai said. "It's no surprise that we often have these intestinal symptoms that come along with the psychological anxieties." Researchers will follow participants in the clinical trial for eight weeks while they receive the capsules and then for four weeks after that. Pai and Couturier say one aspect they'll record is whether participants are willing to take the fecal transplant — or repulsed by it. Then they'll measure how the patient is doing — by tracking their weight, and mood — and how the microbiome changes based on saliva, urine and stool samples. Gut commands the brain? Scientists are learning more about how gut microbes influence brain function. Various studies have shown people with some psychological problems, including anorexia nervosa, having abnormal intestinal microbes, said Dr. Howard Steiger, former director of McGill's eating disorder program. "We always like to think of the brain as being the command centre for the body," Steiger said. "But you know, a lot of recent findings suggest the gut also controls your brain." In people with anorexia, Steiger said, the thought is that their eating behaviour messes up the way gut microbes influence functions in the brain and body. Given that, transplanting purified fecal samples from healthy individuals could help those with anorexia, said the professor emeritus of psychiatry, who continues to treat people with eating disorders "It's not like total voodoo to think that [fecal transplant] would be a potential adjunct in treatment or maybe even a treatment in itself," Steiger said. Some clinicians now refer to anorexia as a "metabo-psychiatric problem," meaning it is associated with vulnerability both in the brain and the body. "I think that's important because it reduces shame," Steiger said. "People don't develop anorexia because of moral weakness. They carry a real, physical, heritable susceptibility." That means anorexia gets triggered by a combination of nature, or genetics, and nurture, such as life events. Making meal time comfortable Anita Federici, a clinical psychologist north of Toronto, treats adolescents with anorexia using family-based therapy. Federici said initially, the parents or caregivers are empowered to learn how to nourish their child by taking over all meal and snack preparation and supervising intake and weight checks. Then the child might start eating lunch at school unsupervised. In the last phase, the youth regains independence over eating and exercise. About half of younger people with anorexia nervosa who receive family-based treatment for it do really well, Federici said. Change pace of meals? But anorexia rarely "flies solo," Federici said, noting many people also have co-occurring suicidal thoughts or experience self injury, substance use, trauma or PTSD, as well as neurodiversity like autism. All can complicate the picture. Federici said the standard approach of medicalizing treatment for anorexia focuses on gaining weight. Treatment that doesn't take into account the metabolic underpinnings of anorexia can miss the mark, Federici says. "There was research not long ago that demonstrated that there were more serotonin receptors in your gut than there were in your brain," she said, referring to a neurotransmitter with roles including influencing mood. Taking the metabolic basis of anorexia into consideration could mean clinicians may need to change how they feed patients, both in terms of the types of food and the pacing of meals, Federici said. In people with anorexia, the body is dysregulated so they feel soothed when they eat less. While bystanders may think the patient isn't motivated to change, Federici said in reality they're quite motivated. "What I have observed over the years is that these people desperately want to get better. They desperately want a different life, but they need the treatments to be different."
Yahoo
18-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
‘Poop transplants' have been happening for decades. Now researchers have identified some unintended consequences
Fecal microbiota transplants are common medical procedures dating back decades that can help restore the gut health of people with colon infections - but scientists now warn of newly discovered consequences from the procedure. The 'poop transplant' is the transfer of the stool of a healthy donor to a recipient. The stool contains beneficial bacteria that can improve the patient's gut bacteria, which guards immune health and helps to regulate metabolism. They are approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat people with common C. diff infections that may cause severe gastrointestinal symptoms and inflammation in hospital patients who have been on antibiotics. Roughly 48,000 procedures are done each year. Now, University of Chicago researchers say a study in mice and experiments with human tissue have revealed some long-lasting and unintended consequences due to transplanting microorganisms from only one section of the digestive tract. 'I think it's a bit of a wakeup call to the field that maybe we shouldn't willy-nilly put large bowel microbes into different parts of the intestine that shouldn't be there,' Dr. Orlando 'Landon' DeLeon, postdoctoral researcher at the university, said in a statement. 'If we're designing good therapeutics, we should be aware of the importance of matching the regional microbiota to their proper environments, so that we provide better overall health benefits.' DeLeon is the lead author of the new research, which was published on Friday in the journal Cell. To reach these conclusions, the authors gave three groups of mice transplants of microorganisms from the middle part of the small intestine that connects to the colon, and a standard fecal transplant from the colon. The test showed that the microorganisms from each transplant were able to colonize the entirety of the intestinal tract in the mice -- not just certain regions. This created what they called regional gut mismatches, lasting for up to three months following a transplant. The microbes also altered their new intestinal environments, 'terraforming' the lining in ways that caused changes in the recipient's metabolism, behavior and energy balance. There were shifts in liver metabolism, including activity in genes associated with immune function. The mice also exhibited different eating behaviors. The gut has several distinct regions with vastly different microbial ecosystems. Imbalances in gut bacteria have been tied to a risk of cancer. 'There are microbes along the entire intestinal tract, and we just study predominately the last third of it (the colon),' DeLeon said. 'So, how can you expect [a transplant], with microbes from a third of the intestinal tract at the end of it, to fix the rest of the intestine?' What this means for human patients may be murky right now, but the authors say more caution is needed with the transplants going forward. They advocate for an approach that would transfer microorganism from all regions of the intestine and not just largely from the colon. In the future, they plan to conduct further study related to how different microbes exert their influence in different parts of the intestine and how the gut regions terraformed by microbiota mismatches can be restored. 'We have absolutely no idea what's in FMT, except that it's a combination of microbes,' Dr. Eugene Chang, the Martin Boyer Professor of Medicine at the university and senior author of the study, said. 'But even a single FMT will cause a change in the host-microbe relationships in these very different regions of the bowel that may be very difficult to reverse.'
Gizmodo
13-06-2025
- Health
- Gizmodo
Poop Transplants Not All They're Cracked Up to Be
Fecal transplants have emerged as a potential treatment for a wide range of conditions, including irritable bowel syndrome, diabetes, and even depression. These so-called poop transplants have understandably received a lot of attention, but new research casts a bit of a wet blanket over the practice. The procedure involves taking microbes from the poop of a healthy person and transferring them into a patient's colon. This should restore balance to their gut microbiome, but according to a study published June 6 in the journal Cell, transplanted microbes may colonize the wrong parts of the digestive system. This can result in long-lasting unintended health consequences, the researchers warn. 'I think it's a bit of a wakeup call to the field that maybe we shouldn't willy-nilly put large bowel microbes into different parts of the intestine that shouldn't be there.' 'I think it's a bit of a wakeup call to the field that maybe we shouldn't willy-nilly put large bowel microbes into different parts of the intestine that shouldn't be there,' said lead author Orlando 'Landon' DeLeon, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago, in a statement. DeLeon led a team of researchers through a series of experiments on mice to determine how fecal matter transplants affect different parts of the intestine. The mice were separated into three groups. One received microbes from the jejunum (the middle part of the small intestine), the second received microbes from the cecum (a pouch that connects the small intestine to the colon), and the third received a standard fecal transplant from the colon. Each part of the digestive system contains uniquely adapted microbiota. The researchers wanted to see if the microbes would stick to their respective niches once inside the mice. In fact, they found that each of the transplants successfully colonized the full intestinal tract, creating regional gut 'mismatches' that lasted for up to three months after the procedure. Microbes that colonized parts of the gut where they didn't belong triggered metabolic changes in these intestinal regions, with the potential to affect a patient's health and behavior. The researchers observed changes in the mice's eating habits, activity, and energy expenditure following the transplants. They also documented changes in gene activity associated with immune function, which in turn led to changes in liver metabolism. Most surprising was the manner in which these foreign microbes altered gene and protein expression in the intestinal lining to make the mismatched gut region more suitable for them. 'It's like they're engineering or terraforming their environments to help them fit in,' DeLeon said. To determine whether these mismatches could occur in actual fecal transplant patients, he and his colleagues conducted additional tests using human tissue samples. Results showed that transplanted gut bacteria can colonize parts of the human digestive system where they don't naturally belong. 'If we're designing good therapeutics, we should be aware of the importance of matching the regional microbiota to their proper environments, so that we provide better overall health benefits,' DeLeon said. For example, the findings suggest it may be safer to use microbes retrieved from all the parts of the digestive system, according to the researchers. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) only recommends fecal transplants for treating repeated infections of Clostridium difficile, or C. diff. This bacterium—which can cause severe gastrointestinal symptoms—most commonly sickens hospital patients who have been treated with antibiotics. Fecal transplants have proven to be highly effective for treating these infections, and those results have encouraged researchers to investigate other applications for this procedure. A wave of new research suggests that fecal transplants could treat conditions that go beyond the gut. Indeed, studies have found that this procedure could benefit patients with neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders, multiple sclerosis, type 2 diabetes, and more. DeLeon's findings suggest that doctors need to better understand the risks of fecal matter transplants before this treatment can be used for diseases other than C. diff. He plans to keep investigating how different microbes affect each part of the intestine and explore ways to restore altered regions to their original state. This study shows that when it comes to gut microbes, location really matters. Getting the right bugs in the right place could unlock the full potential of fecal transplants.
The Independent
06-06-2025
- Health
- The Independent
The surprising health benefits of fecal transplants
Fecal microbiota transplants, used to restore gut health, involve transferring stool from a healthy donor to a recipient. A new University of Chicago study in mice reveals potential long-lasting, unintended health consequences from these transplants due to microorganisms colonizing the entire intestinal tract, creating regional gut mismatches. The study found that transplanted microbes altered intestinal environments, affecting metabolism, behavior, energy balance, and liver function in mice. Researchers advocate for caution and suggest using microorganisms from all regions of the intestine, not just the colon, for transplants. Dr. Eugene Chang, the study's senior author, notes that fecal microbiota transplants can cause changes in host-microbe relationships in different bowel regions that may be difficult to reverse.
The Independent
06-06-2025
- Health
- The Independent
‘Poop transplants' have been happening for decades. Now researchers have identified some unintended consequences
Fecal microbiota transplants are common medical procedures dating back decades that can help restore the gut health of people with colon infections - but scientists now warn of newly discovered consequences from the procedure. The 'poop transplant' is the transfer of the stool of a healthy donor to a recipient. The stool contains beneficial bacteria that can improve the patient's gut bacteria, which guards immune health and helps to regulate metabolism. They are approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat people with common C. diff infections that may cause severe gastrointestinal symptoms and inflammation in hospital patients who have been on antibiotics. Roughly 48,000 procedures are done each year. Now, University of Chicago researchers say a study in mice and experiments with human tissue have revealed some long-lasting and unintended consequences due to transplanting microorganisms from only one section of the digestive tract. 'I think it's a bit of a wakeup call to the field that maybe we shouldn't willy-nilly put large bowel microbes into different parts of the intestine that shouldn't be there,' Dr. Orlando 'Landon' DeLeon, postdoctoral researcher at the university, said in a statement. 'If we're designing good therapeutics, we should be aware of the importance of matching the regional microbiota to their proper environments, so that we provide better overall health benefits.' DeLeon is the lead author of the new research, which was published on Friday in the journal Cell. To reach these conclusions, the authors gave three groups of mice transplants of microorganisms from the middle part of the small intestine that connects to the colon, and a standard fecal transplant from the colon. The test showed that the microorganisms from each transplant were able to colonize the entirety of the intestinal tract in the mice -- not just certain regions. This created what they called regional gut mismatches, lasting for up to three months following a transplant. The microbes also altered their new intestinal environments, 'terraforming' the lining in ways that caused changes in the recipient's metabolism, behavior and energy balance. There were shifts in liver metabolism, including activity in genes associated with immune function. The mice also exhibited different eating behaviors. The gut has several distinct regions with vastly different microbial ecosystems. Imbalances in gut bacteria have been tied to a risk of cancer. 'There are microbes along the entire intestinal tract, and we just study predominately the last third of it (the colon),' DeLeon said. 'So, how can you expect [a transplant], with microbes from a third of the intestinal tract at the end of it, to fix the rest of the intestine?' What this means for human patients may be murky right now, but the authors say more caution is needed with the transplants going forward. They advocate for an approach that would transfer microorganism from all regions of the intestine and not just largely from the colon. In the future, they plan to conduct further study related to how different microbes exert their influence in different parts of the intestine and how the gut regions terraformed by microbiota mismatches can be restored. 'We have absolutely no idea what's in FMT, except that it's a combination of microbes,' Dr. Eugene Chang, the Martin Boyer Professor of Medicine at the university and senior author of the study, said. 'But even a single FMT will cause a change in the host-microbe relationships in these very different regions of the bowel that may be very difficult to reverse.'
