15 Nov 2014

Faecal transplant pill

From This Way Up, 12:15 pm on 15 November 2014

Marvellous microbes and faecal transplants; the process for transplanting someone's faeces into your gut via a tube. It's still a relatively new treatment but it seems to work; clinical trials show the procedure is as effective as antibiotics in treating the intestinal infection, clostridium difficile (or c-diff).

A team in the US has been testing a pill that does the same job; no tubes, regulatory hurdles or patient resistance to overcome. And it works too according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. We speak to senior author Dr Elizabeth Hohmann, and a doctor working on the front line.