Patient in USA dies after stool transplant

In the US, has infected a Patient by a stool transplant with a multi-resistant bacterium. He died of the consequences. A second Patient of the clinical study is ill, informed the US food and drug administration FDA. He also had to get a transplant from the same donor.

With fecal transplants, specifically recycled feces from the intestine of a donor is transplanted into a patient, in the sick-making bacteria spread. The aim is that the healthy microbial community of the dispenser displaces the sick. Researchers decode slowly, how intestinal bacteria affect health and, therefore, great hopes in the therapy. A recent study has provided evidence that the intestinal microflora could influence early births, and chronic intestinal diseases.

In the current case, the stool sample of the donor have not been studied on multi-resistant bacteria, the FDA. According to an analysis by the used of stool sample contained a strain of E-coli bacteria, which can make antibiotics ineffective. For healthy people this is usually harmless. In the patients who had received the chair, was weakened the immune system, however. The pathogens were able to spread so freely.

Further Details of the patients, the FDA was not known. Unclear example is what the clinical study is accurate, and due to which diseases the patients were treated.

Other studies stopped

A number of similar studies would be interrupted until the Parties could demonstrate that the samples were sufficiently investigated, said Peter Marks of the FDA of the “New York Times”.

Also in Germany, a study to the chair of transplantation (FMT) stem cell transplants to be running according to the microbiome researcher Maria Vehreschild of the University hospital of Cologne is currently. However, all donations would be tested on multi-resistant germs. “Overall, the safety requirements of studies with the FMT – preparations in Germany are very high, so that such complications can be avoided,” so Vehreschild.

However, many clinics chair to provide transplants, for example, in the case of specific diarrhoeal diseases. For such transplants, there is no strict requirements for the control of stool samples. Patients should be informed, prior to therapy, therefore, the samples were tested.