by FADworker » Fri Mar 16, 2012 10:46 pm
Hi flower
The possibility of completely replacing the bacterial content of ones bowel with faecal material from a donor - bacteriotherapy as it has become known - has received more attention in the past few years mainly, I think, because we're beginning to appreciate much more that the bacteria in our guts - the so-called 'good bacteria' - can interact with us in a truly holistic way. This has been helped by the ability scientists now have of being able to 'read' the DNA sequences of the bacteria present in a stool sample and thus determine the numbers and different types of bacteria present. Our resident bowel bacteria appear to infuence all sorts of things including the regulation of our immune system, obesity, diabetes, etc. As for bacteriotherapy, its been shown to work well with something like a Clostridium difficile infection thats proving difficult to shift with antibiotics.
Would it work for TMAU2? Well first we'd have to determine whether there are indeed particular gut bacteria that are the main culprits involved in converting the TMA precursors in the diet to TMA and whether these bacteria are found in patients with TMAU2 more often than in the general population. If that were the case then selectively removing those bacteria might work in TMAU2 and bacteriotherapy might be an option. Some colleagues and I just had a research grant application, designed to do just these sorts of experiments, turned down so we'll have to wait a little longer to find out.