A study in BMC Medicine found that fecal microbiota transplantation is an effective long-term treatment for bacterial infection in the colon.
The researchers identified 131 fecal and mucosal samples from 14 recurrent Clostridium difficile infection patients, both before and after the patients had received fecal microbiota transplantation. They analyzed the microbiota profiles from these patients at their one-year follow-up, to determine whether the restored intestinal microbiota and suppressed C. difficile bacteria seen in the short-term were sustained.
Here's what you need to know:
1. At the one-year mark, the fecal microbiota transplantation treatment was still successful in all patients.
2. The patients' gut microbiomes were dominated by Clostridium clusters IV and XIVa, which are major anaerobic bacterial groups seen in healthy patients.
3. In the mucosa, the amount of Bacteroidetes bacteria stabilized, as well.