New Treatment for Obesity???

There’s some really fascinating research coming down the pike about the role bacteria in our gut (our so-called microbiome) play in our overall health. Rapidly becoming mainstream is the idea of “fecal transplants” to cure resistant gut infections with a particularly nasty germ called clostridium difficile (or C. diff to its friends — er, to those who know it well). Now there’s a case report of a patient who was cured of her C. diff infection with a fecal transplant from an overweight donor, who is now packing on the pounds. While we need to be cautious about that whole correlation-causation thing, the incident is apparently compelling enough for the authors to avoid overweight fecal donors in the future. I read this a bit differently. Analogous to bone marrow transplants (curing bone marrow cancers like leukemia and lymphoma by wiping out the bad marrow with radiation and chemo and then replacing it with marrow from a healthy donor) how about this: Take overweight patients and wipe out their gut microbiome with powerful antibiotics (preferably ones that aren’t absorbed; vancomycin comes to mind.) Then give them a fecal transplant from a non-overweight donor and see what happens. It seems extraordinarily low risk, despite the ick factor. Frankly, I’d sign up for that in a heartbeat. Gives a whole new twist to the sentiment “Eat shit.”
Source: Musings of a Dinosaur - Category: Primary Care Authors: Tags: Medical Source Type: blogs