Saturday, January 9, 2016

Freeze-dried poop pills being tested for obesity treatment

In a randomized, controlled clinical trial starting this year, researchers will test out such a fecal formula for the treatment of obesity. They’ll also try to glean critical details about the human microbiome and its role in our health and metabolism. The trial, led by Elaine Yu, an assistant professor and clinical researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital, will involve taking fecal samples from lean, healthy donors then freeze-drying the stool, putting a gram or two into capsules, and giving them to 20 obese patients.

Such poop-packed pills, which are designed to replace a person’s intestinal microbes with those from a donor via their feces, have proven effective at treating tenacious gut infections. This has led researchers to ponder whether the transplants could remedy other health problems, including obesity and metabolic disorders. A few animal studies and some anecdotal data in humans suggests the answer is yes—and Yu hopes to get a final answer with the upcoming trial.

At the moment, “we have no idea what the result will be,” Yu told Ars. But she and colleagues are cautiously optimistic.

A few years ago, researchers took the gut microbes from a set of twins—one lean, one obese—and transplanted them into two sets of microbe-free mice. Even though all the mice were on the same diet, the rodents that received the obese twin’s microbes became chubby. The mice that got the lean twin’s mix stayed slim, suggesting that the microbes were calling the shots when it came to the animals’ weight.

No comments:

Post a Comment