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Poop transplants may have helped two patients with risk factors avoid severe COVID-19, a new case report suggests. But the study was based on only two patients, so the improvement could be due to chance or other treatments.
Both patients were recently hospitalized in Poland with a bacterial infection and received fecal transplants as treatment. Both patients then tested positive for COVID-19, but neither developed serious illness despite underlying conditions. “One possible explanation” is that the poop transplant, which is given to stimulate the immune response, may have prevented patients from becoming very sick, the authors wrote in the study.
The procedure, called a fecal microbiota transplant (FMT), involves transplanting a healthy person’s poop into the intestine of a patient with a bowel disease, such as an infection with the bacteria. Clostridium difficile (also called Clostridioides difficile or abbreviated to C. diff), Previously reported live science. This “healthy” poo is believed to contain a mixture of bacteria that can help the body fight off harmful pathogens that cause problems such as diarrhea or irritable bowel syndrome.
Related: Quick guide: COVID-19 vaccines used and how they work
Poop transplants have been used to help enhance the effects of immunotherapy for cancer patients, Previously reported live science. This is not the first time that faecal transplants have been offers or administered not a problem in patients with both a bacterial infection and COVID-19, but scientists are unsure whether transplants can treat or reduce the severity of COVID-19.
The two patients in this case study went to the hospital for a bacterial infection and did not develop symptoms of COVID-19 until they had already been admitted and started fecal transplant treatment for the. bacterial infection.
The first patient in the case study was an 80-year-old man who was first treated in hospital for pneumonia and sepsis, or blood poisoning. But the man was also infected with C. diff, for which he underwent FMT.
After starting FMT, he also tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) and began treatment on convalescent plasma (blood that contains antibodies taken from COVID-19 patients). 19 recovered) and an antiviral drug known as remdesivir. Remdesivir may lead to improvements after an average of 10 days, and the benefits of convalescent plasma are “limited,” the authors wrote.
But surprisingly, two days after receiving poo transplants, her COVID-19 symptoms disappeared and her pneumonia did not get worse.
The second patient was a 19-year-old man who suffered from a type of inflammatory bowel disease known as ulcerative colitis and who was being treated with drugs that suppressed the immune system. He was admitted to hospital after a recurrent infection with It’s hard. He received a poo transplant and antibiotics to treat the bacterial infection.
About 15 hours later, he developed a fever and tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. Even though he was immunocompromised and received no treatment for COVID-19, he only developed mild symptoms.
“Our main conclusion from these cases is that FMT appears safe and comparably effective in the treatment of relapses. [Clostridioides difficile infection] in patients with coexisting COVID-19, ”the authors wrote. “Another more speculative question is whether FMT may have an impact on the clinical course of COVID-19. “
In other words, poo transplants may have helped alleviate severe illness in these patients, both of whom had risk factors for developing severe COVID-19. Yet even people with risk factors usually don’t develop severe COVID-19, so these two patients could have recovered by chance.
Yet this was a case report of only two patients, and it is difficult to distinguish the effects of the different treatments. Researchers now plan to test the effects of poop transplants on COVID-19 patients in a formal clinical trial.
The results were published on July 6 in the journal Intestine.
Originally posted on Live Science.
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