I think US "professionals" are being pro-active. Mostly medical researchers, and doctors involved in clinical trials.
I do not think it is the place of doctors in non-research settings to just willy-nilly prescribe treatments that some research suggests might have some promise. Another word for such activity might be malpractice, or irresponsibility. Non-researchers who want to consider a new (still under study) treatment for their patients can hook them up with a clinical trial, or wait a little longer for standards of care to lend more support to their thought. I am not there for my GI to experiment on me - unless I ask for it.
I think the literature shows this to be an active area. I got over a humndred hits in WebOfScience database, and even after removign those with c-diff in the title, I still had 37 - some of which were 2010-2011. FOr exaple:
- Borody, T. J., & Campbell, J. (2011). Fecal microbiota transplantation: current status and future directions. Expert Review of Gastroenterology & Hepatology, 5(6), 653-655.
Friswell, M., Campbell, B., & Rhodes, J. (2010). The Role of Bacteria in the Pathogenesis of Inflammatory Bowel Disease. Gut and Liver, 4(3), 295-306.
Kahn, S. A., Gorawara-Bhat, R., & Ruhin, D. T. (2011). Fecal Bacteriotherapy for Ulcerative Colitis; Patients Are Ready, Are We? Gastroenterology, 140(5), S593-S593.
Landy, J., Al-Hassi, H. O., McLaughlin, S. D., Walker, A. W., Ci***ira, P. J., Nicholls, R. J., et al. (2011). Review article: faecal transplantation therapy for gastrointestinal disease. Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics, 34(4), 409-415.
Borody (2011) was actually the author of the 2003 acticle in the OP.
I will read these with interest. Especially the 2 review articles.
The 2003 article was a little unreliable because it was 6 case reports selected form over 15 years of clinical records. We had no information on how many other cases might have tried FT without success. I am also keenly aware of the difference between "100% of patients studied were cured" and "we select/present 6 cases where a 100% cure was observed." I do not understand how this got published with the editors and reviewers requiring a more honest and less misleading phrasing. Does not mean I think the information is false - just that the communication was flawed and had a high potential to mislead.
Anyway, if I have more thoughts after reading the reviews, I will try to post a summary.