Novel Approach to Restoring Beneficial Gut Bacteria After HCT
Posted: Friday, September 28, 2018
Researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) Cancer Center have shown that autologous fecal microbiota transplantation is a safe and potentially effective way to help replenish beneficial gut bacteria in patients with cancer who require intense antibiotics during allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HCT). “If validated in larger studies, this approach may prove to be a relatively simple way to quickly restore a person’s healthy microbiome following intensive antimicrobial therapy,” noted Anthony S. Fauci, MD, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which provided funding for part of the project. The details of this study report appear in Science Translational Medicine.
In the study, researchers found that autologous fecal microbiota transplantation resulted in the recovery of beneficial gut bacteria to near baseline levels within days, thus restoring patients’ digestive, immune, and other essential functions. The patients who received autologous fecal microbiota transplantation consistently regained bacterial diversity, composition, and function; recovery of beneficial bacteria in the control patients was delayed. With the standard of care, beneficial bacteria typically take many weeks to recover from antibiotic treatment, leaving patients at risk of other infectious diseases, including Clostridium difficile infection.
The researchers are continuing to monitor the study patients to determine whether autologous fecal microbiota transplantation improves patient outcomes, such as the incidence and severity of bacterial, viral, and fungal infections and the incidence and severity of graft-versus-host disease. Whether fecal microbiota transplantation from a healthy donor would be as beneficial as a patient’s own fecal sample at restoring beneficial bacteria remains to be studied.
