In the News

As the number of transplants increased so did the methods of delivery.  Today the debate is whether or not to designate the FMT as an investigational drug or to continue with the FMTs as organ transplants.

There’s a new war raging in health care, with hundreds of millions of dollars at stake and thousands of lives in the balance.

In June, after a patient died and another was sickened from a fecal transplant that contained drug-resistant bacteria, the Food and Drug Administration stepped in and set new guidelines for the procedure.

Patient-turned-researcher teams up with her doctor to advance U of M’s pioneering microbiota transplant program.

The FDA held a public comment session on Monday in Washington, D.C., to hear testimony on the agency’s policy on enforcement discretion of fecal microbiota transplantation for patients with recurrent Clostridioides difficile infection, as well as what is needed to make a path forward to approval.

At first glance, it might seem odd that our gut microbiome plays an influential role in our immune system response. It’s not so strange, though, considering that the vast majority of our immune cells, up to 70%–80% of them, hang out in the intestine regularly.

Cracking the mysteries of the human microbiome—those teeming communities of bacteria, fungi, and viruses that live on and within each of us—remains one of medicine’s most exciting frontiers.

The intestinal microbiota, also commonly known as the ‘‘gut microbiome’’ is integral to human physiology and has wide-ranging effects on the development and function of the immune system, energy metabolism and even nervous system activity.

It’s tough to find an inappropriate mealtime conversation with this group – not because they’re crass or ill-mannered, but because they view the universe of the colon very differently from the rest of us.

Levi Teigen, assistant professor in the U of M’s College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences Department of Food Science and Nutrition, shares some insights on the role clinical nutrition can play in managing digestive diseases. 

In the December 2016 Nature Outlook article entitled “Reseeding the Gut” Dr. Alexander Khoruts discusses how gut microbiota likely plays important roles in inflammatory bowel disease.

For years, a bacteria known as Clostridium difficile that can cause intestinal infections, crippling diarrhea and even death was thought to be a problem confined to hospitals and care facilities.

Dr. Alexander Khoruts had run out of options. In 2008, Dr. Khoruts, a gastroenterologist at the University of Minnesota, took on a patient suffering from a vicious gut infection of Clostridium difficile.

The Twin Cities is emerging as a major player in what could become a multibillion dollar industry: Gut science.

More than a decade ago, little was known about the myriad of microorganisms that live happily inside and on your body. Now researchers believe they could change the future of human health.