"An emerging treatment for a common hospitalacquired infection could be slightly less gross in the future. Researchers have found that delivering a fecal microbiota transplant FMT in a pilla poop pill basicallyis no worse than a similar procedure done with a colonoscopy. Neither option may sound particularly enticing but FMTs are wildly effective at treating a very nasty infection called Clostridium difficile. One of the first controlled clinical trials http for FMTs in  ended early because the patients who received the treatment were doing so much better than patients who didnt. In the new study almost  percent of adults treated with the capsules were cured.  Its absolutely insane. We just dont see kind of efficacy with drugs Dr. Dina Kao told Newsweek. Kao is one of the authors of the paper and a gastroenterologist at the University of Alberta. Kao and her colleagues published the findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association on Tuesday.  C. difficile infections can set in after a course of broadspectrum antibiotics which can wipe out some of the bacterial populations normally found in peoples gut. The transplants work by replacing those healthy bacteria. C. difficile is the single biggest cause of diarrhea in a health care setting Kao said. It is our public enemy No.  in hospitals.  According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention https_threats.html C. difficile infects half a million people in the United States per year and kills  people. But patients may be hesitant to accept this potentially lifesaving treatment because there are feces involved. Previous research httpsacademic.oup.comcidarticle found that while every part of this treatment was unappealing to most people being offered the treatment in a pill form made patients significantly more open to the idea. Other efforts to take the poop out of the poop pillsto just include the bacteria thought to be behind the benefitshave failed httpir.serestherapeutics.comphoenix.zhtmlcpirolnewsArticleID. The  patients used in this study may have been selected in part because they were ideal candidates for FMTs Dr. Elizabeth Hohmann noted but she said the paper is solid overall. Hohmann a researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital who has also done research on FMTs was not involved in his research. The results are sort of a bestcase scenario she said. What I like about this paper is that it validates the upperGI route and demonstrates that you can get very good cure rates without doing a colonoscopy. Thats important because colonoscopies and the anesthesia required for the procedure can put a lot of stress on a persons body and can be complicated for the people most at risk for C. difficile infections Hohmann noted Kaos study also showed that people found FMTs far less unpleasant when the poop came in a pill. Twothirds of the  patients who got the pills said their experiences were not at all unpleasant while just  percent of the  patients who received the FMT via a colonoscopy could say the same. But most importantly the study found no difference in effectiveness between the two therapies. There was a significant difference in cost. Though the procedures were done in a Canadian hospital the FMTs delivered by colonoscopy cost nearly  USD more than the capsules which cost about . FMTs are not yet common practice though Kao noted that it is becoming the standard of care for C. difficile infections. For this group of patients nothing else really works she said. However the same cannot be said yet for other conditions. While the FDA said in  that doctors can try fecal transplants in patients with C. difficile infections the agency noted doctors should only use FMT for other conditions in clinical trials. Over  clinical trials are ongoing for various FMT therapies httpsclinicaltrials.govctresultstermFMTSearchApplyrecrsarecrsdage_vgndrtyperslt including ones to treat ulcerative colitis and Crohns disease in children. New FDA guidelines https have been in the works since  but arent finalized. Despite the FDAs advice some people have set up shop as FMT providers anyway. Buzzfeed reported https_term.dhYMnMob in June that one clinic in Tampa was even providing FMTs as a treatment for autism. Though physicians think they know how FMTs work it remains somewhat mysterious. One recent small study found that even stool samples that are entirely free of bacteria can be effective perhaps because there are nonbacterial organisms that also help. We still dont understand whats going on and in these other conditions its not as clearcut that the disturbance in the bacterial composition is the cause Kao said. Stool is such a complex mixture."