$635 poop pills cure deadly gastrointestinal infection

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(credit: Ana C./ Flickr ) The country’s first stool bank , OpenBiome, is now selling capsules of fecal matter to treat life-threatening Clostridium difficile , or C. diff, infections. The $635 pill-based therapy, a type of fecal transplant, is highly effective against the difficult-to-treat gastrointestinal infection, according to results of a pilot study. A single dose, which includes a whopping 30 pills, cured 70 percent of patients. A second dose bumped the success rate up to 94 percent. The treatment, currently being sold only to doctors, may offer an easier alternative to other effective fecal transplant routes, namely  colonoscopies, nasal tubes, and enemas . Scientists have known for years that fecal transplants in general are highly effective against C. diff infections, which can be extremely difficult to cure. The infection can cause severe, recurring diarrhea. It can be resistant to antibiotic treatments, and sometimes it turns deadly. In the US, C. diff causes more than 450,000 infections a year, leading to about 15,000 deaths . Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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$635 poop pills cure deadly gastrointestinal infection

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