Patients with acute leukemia receive bone marrow from a healthy donor. Sometimes that goes wrong and the new bone marrow targets the patient's organs. This is called graft vs host disease. Researchers from Amsterdam UMC have investigated whether a donation of poop from a healthy donor can help some patients against this rejection reaction.
In an article published in Science Translational Medicine, Mette Hazenberg and Yannouck van Lier describe fifteen patients who received a healthy intestinal flora via a poop transplant. This had a favorable effect at ten. The researchers now want to find out which components are responsible for this in order to develop a good therapy for these patients. A Dutch subtitled video has been recorded for Science in which they make their findings worldwide.