Elizabeth Hohmann is very interested in faeces, and spends her days sifting through stools to find those that could make the biggest difference to other people’s health
Faecal transplants are now commonly used to treat recurrent Clostridioides difficile infections, but finding people whose faeces are of sufficient quality to be used in these transplants is a major challenge.
“It’s actually quite a frustrating activity because only about 1 per cent of people who respond to advertisements for donors are healthy enough,” says Elizabeth Hohmann, an infectious disease expert at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. “I ask them to keep coming back to donate because they’re very hard to find.” Over the years, some of her donors have supplied more than 100 of their precious stools.
Hohmann has been in charge of faecal transplants at the hospital for 15 years. It is her job to collect donated stools and turn them into oral capsules, which are then given to people with hard-to-treat gut conditions, like recurrent C. difficile infections that cause diarrhoea and haven’t responded to antibiotics. The “good” gut bacteria from the donor faeces help to edge out the “bad” bacteria in the recipients’ guts, often alleviating their symptoms.
To find donors, Hohmann posts ads online offering $1200 for a month’s worth of stool donations.
Full story: This doctor is on the hunt for people with first-rate faeces (New Scientist)