Fecal Bacteriopathy Study-Borody 2003

In my opinion this treatment of Inflammatory Bowel Disease should be foremost of every research study in the US. Why isn't it? This is a very small study just 6 people with UC and needs to be done on a larger scale.
prdupl02.ynet.co.il/ForumFiles_2/28701499.pdf

I think there is a typo at the beinning. It states that the participants had UC for under 5 years when later it states that they have had UC for 5 years or longer, in fact one woman in her 50's had UC for 20 years and achieved remission with this treatment. This is good news for people with long-term UC, that a safe non-drug protocol is available to help them get back a normal life. I think I read that there was a 10 year follow-up and remissions were still in effect.

Why is no one funding a study of this in the US? WHY?

Because his work was NOT a study, it was a set of case reports. It has been given the consideration it deserves. The approach is mentioned in reviews. It is placed in the larger framework of probiotic therapy. Basic research, such as DNA tecniques for identifying the strains in a sample, are seeing rapid development. Studies are moving forward. One clinical trial in Canada right now. Some GI clinics are making limited offering of the therapy.

Why is it not foremost? Because it has very weak evidence. Brody himself has noted that for UC (not c.diff) it can take multiple weekly treatments over periods of upto half a year, and then only some people get remission ... and then some of them need to continue the treatment as maintence.

The reports are all over the place: during scoping, as an enema, w/ w/o antibiotics, several in a week vs many in a year, w/ w/o other meds ... etc. It is a mess. There is no control for placebo effect. There is no confirmation that folks making many of these testimonials even had UC vs IBS vs infection.

.... and some people have no noticeable benefit for whatever particular variation they tried, or report pain and worsening symptoms. How can you just state that it is "safe"? Do you know what safe is? save is something that has at least gone through controlled phase-I trials and been found to not cause illness or death in too many subjects. Save is not something that strikes you as safe, or that a friend said was safe. Safe is something that is scientifically determined.

So yes, the key question is, "Why is no one funding a study of this in the US?". But rather than start with the premise that relevant research is not being funded, that it is safe, that it is effective, and only then as WHY? -- Start with the fact that concerned organizations like CCFA and highly trained GI researchers are not putting it foremost and have it somewhere more distal on the list. (It IS on the list, despite what you suggest.) Then, question which of you premises might be off. Is it as effective as you gathered? Is it really? Is it for sure safe? Is it really not being studied? Could it be that there are other approaches showing more promise, having stronger evidence?

How can you just state that it is "safe"? Do you know what safe is? save is something that has at least gone through controlled phase-I trials and been found to not cause illness or death in too many subjects. Save is not something that strikes you as safe, or that a friend said was safe. Safe is something that is scientifically determined.

Don't place too much faith in drug trials. This month's Scientific American magazine has an article showing that the results of many clinical trials are corrupted by research money from the drug companies. If it is any consolation to you, as bad as Big Pharma is the banksters running our financial system are worse.

www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-drug-company-money-undermining-science
How Drug Company Money Is Undermining Science
The pharmaceutical industry funnels money to prominent scientists who are doing research that affects its products--and nobody can stop it.

Peer-reviewed journals are littered with studies showing how drug industry money is subtly undermining scientific objectivity. A 2009 study in Cancer showed that participants somehow survived longer when a study's authors had conflicts of interest than when the authors were clean. A 1998 study in the New England Journal of Medicine found a “strong association” between researchers' conclusions about the safety of calcium channel blockers, a class of drugs used to reduce blood pressure, and their financial relationships with the firms producing the drugs.

Drugs are approved or rejected based on supposedly independent research. When a pill does not work as advertised and is withdrawn from the market or relabeled as dangerous, there is often a trail of biased research and cash to scientists. For example, in the mid-2000s, when patients started suing Wyeth about another estrogen drug, Prempro (which has been linked to the risk of breast cancer, strokes and certain other diseases), Wyeth's ghostwriting/guest-authorship arrangements became a central part of the case.

When it was the turn of Merck's Vioxx painkiller (which was linked to heart attacks and strokes), drug industry money came up, too. In one Vioxx study, for example, academic researchers appear to have signed on to a Merck-sponsored project after the company had already done all the data analysis.

According to a 2010 study that appeared in the British Medical Journal, 87 percent of researchers who expressed “favorable views” of GlaxoSmithKline's diabetes drug Avandia, despite indications that it might increase the risk of heart attacks, had some financial involvement with the drug's manufacturer.

When a U.S. Food and Drug Administration committee debated whether or not to pull Avandia from the market because of the link to heart attacks, it came out that members of the committee, too, had been taking money from drug companies.

Post Edited (BabeintheWoods) : 12/7/2012 2:14:59 PM (GMT-7)

This is the "famous six" article for the FMT groupies (like myself). Anyway, Barody himself is quite clear that it's a treatment in constant flux - with our without antibiotics/what long term protocol (he's now using a much longer term protocol than the one in the article) etc. I do question why it's not being funded by the CCFA and it is interesting to the top GIs in the US/Canada. Our daughter's (pediatric) GI encouraged us to do it when we expressed interest and was willing to rx the abx but not facilitate the transplant by scope (as she does not have approval for this obviously). We also obtained permission for her to have it done by scope at Boston Children's, which is the affiliated with Harvard and is considered one of the three top pediatric IBD centers in the US. Further, they are trying to obtain permission for a trial (adult) at U of Chicago under Dr Rubin (again, a top GI). There is interest but reluctance in the absence of trials and funding for trials. I have known quite a few people get well through this now personally. It's up to anyone if they want to try it and if they do which protocol they choose to follow.