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C. difficile infection. Their findings will provide added stimulus to the ongoing efforts to address the other main impediments to the routine and widespread use of FMT. Natural antipathy toward fecal therapy can be reduced by banking suitable material from anonymous, screened donors.8 Such a system would both distance the recipient from the stool donation and provide physicians with readily accessible, quality-controlled treatment materials. Ultimately, the use of feces may be eliminated in favor of defined mixtures of cultured bacteria that confer colonization resistance against C. difficile, an approach that was pioneered by Tvede and Rask-Madsen in 1989 and is now being examined afresh.9 The later approach can also assuage concern regarding the inadvertent transmission of disease-causing pathogens through FMT. These advances can make intestinal microbiota therapy acceptable and accessible to most patients and their physicians. It will also facilitate the more extensive clinical evaluation of FMT for severe, refractory C. difficile infection, as first advocated in 1958.1 The significance of the study by van Nood et al. goes far beyond the treatment of recurrent or severe C. difficile infection. The burgeoning field of microbiome research, initially made possible by technologies to identify bacterial 16S ribosomal RNA in complex biologic samples, has alerted us to the abundant, diverse, and influential nature of the gut microbiota.10 Microbiome research has been expanded and complemented by methods to characterize the protein composition (proteomics) and metabolic processes (metabolomics) of the intestinal contents and those from other body sites. The results of this study represent a clear precedent in which planned therapeutic manipulation of the human intestinal microbiota can lead to demonstrable, clinically important benefits, thereby bringing FMT to the mainstream of modern, evidence-based
medical practice.1,5-9 The study by van Nood et al. will encourage and facilitate the design of similar trials of intestinal microbiota therapy for other indications, such as inflammatory bowel disease, irritable bowel syndrome, prevention of colorectal carcinoma, and metabolic disorders, to name just a few.10 As such, it heralds the delayed adolescence of a broad and exciting new branch of human therapeutics.
Disclosure forms provided by the author are available with the full text of this article at NEJM.org. From the Division of Gastroenterology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Harvard Medical School both in Boston. This article was published on January 16, 2013, at NEJM.org.
1. Eiseman B, Silen W, Bascom GS, Kauvar AJ. Fecal enema as
an adjunct in the treatment of pseudomembranous enterocolitis. Surgery 1958;44:854-9. 2. Kelly CP, LaMont JT. Clostridium difficile more difficult than ever. N Engl J Med 2008;359:1932-40. 3. Gerding DN, Johnson S. Management of Clostridium difficile infection: thinking inside and outside the box. Clin Infect Dis 2010;51:1306-13. 4. McFarland LV, Surawicz CM, Greenberg RN, et al. A randomized placebo-controlled trial of Saccharomyces boulardii in combination with standard antibiotics for Clostridium difficile disease. JAMA 1994;271:1913-8. [Erratum, JAMA 1994;272:518.] 5. Bakken JS, Borody T, Brandt LJ, et al. Treating Clostridium difficile infection with fecal microbiota transplantation. Clin Gastroenterol Hepatol 2011;9:1044-9. 6. Gough E, Shaikh H, Manges AR. Systematic review of intestinal microbiota transplantation (fecal bacteriotherapy) for recurrent Clostridium difficile infection. Clin Infect Dis 2011;53: 994-1002. 7. van Nood E, Vrieze A, Nieuwdorp M, et al. Duodenal infusion of donor feces for recurrent Clostridium difficile. N Engl J Med 2013;368:407-15. 8. Hamilton MJ, Weingarden AR, Sadowsky MJ, Khoruts A. Standardized frozen preparation for transplantation of fecal microbiota for recurrent Clostridium difficile infection. Am J Gastroenterol 2012;107:761-7. 9. Tvede M, Rask-Madsen J. Bacteriotherapy for chronic relapsing Clostridium difficile diarrhoea in six patients. Lancet 1989; 1:1156-60. 10. Shanahan F. The gut microbiota in 2011: translating the microbiota to medicine. Nat Rev Gastroenterol Hepatol 2011; 9:72-4.
DOI: 10.1056/NEJMe1214816
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