BALTIMORE — A new Johns Hopkins study made some new findings about the relatively new procedure of fecal transplants - which use feces from healthy people to help patients with a serious bowel disease.
There were interesting findings about women who got fecal microbes transplanted from healthy male donors.
Researchers found that intestinal cells may help some patients as much as the fecal bacteria - and they also found male genetic material in the intestines of the females who got the fecal transplants.
Sandeep Verma, M.D., a research and clinical fellow with the division of gastroenterology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said in a press release:
Our research points to a much more complex interaction between the donor microbiome and the recipient’s gut environment than previously reported... This finding suggests that stool is a much more complex excretion than we thought it was.
Fecal transplants were first approved in 2022 by the Food and Drug Administration, and about 48,000 procedures are done each year.
The "relatively rare" procedure is "highly effective," for people with dangerous and recurrent bacterial infections, said Johns Hopkins in a press release.
The bacteria, called C. difficile, causes severe diarrhea and colon inflammation.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved FMT in 2022. Although relatively rare, use of the procedure is highly effective. An estimated 48,000 are done in the U.S. annually.
The Hopkins study, which was published Oct. 18 in the Journal of Gastro Hep Advances, analyzed fecal samples from 30 healthy male and female donors, and 22 fecal-transplant recipients.
About one-third (33 percent) of the female patients who got male donors were found to have Y (male) chromosomes in their feces.
Researchers are cautioning, however, that more studies are needed in a larger group of female patients to determine the extent to which donor cells "engraft" in the females' intestines.
