It sounds disgusting because it is: a capsule filled with freeze-dried human feces, swallowed whole and sent deep into your gut. And yet, British doctors say these so-called “crapsules” could be the future of medicine.
Researchers at Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospitals in London are using stool from screened donors to fight off antibiotic-resistant infections—some of the most dangerous bugs on the planet. The treatment, known as a fecal microbiota transplant (FMT), isn’t new. But delivering it in pill form is. And according to early results, it might actually work.
“It’s very exciting,” Dr. Blair Merrick, who led the trial, told BBC. “There’s a real shift from 20 years ago, where all bacteria and viruses were assumed to do you harm, to now where we realize they are completely necessary to our overall health.”
How Do Poop Pills Work?
So, how does it work? Patients who’ve recently battled a drug-resistant infection are given a series of capsules filled with freeze-dried stool. Once the pills reach the intestines, the donor bacteria get to work, crowding out the harmful microbes that were left behind. In a recent study of 41 patients, those who got the real treatment showed clear signs of bacterial takeover. The bad microbes? Significantly reduced.
Superbugs are expected to kill up to 39 million people globally by 2050. And the gut, according to Dr. Merrick, is “the biggest reservoir of antibiotic resistance in humans.” That’s why this bizarre, undeniably unappetizing approach is getting serious attention.
The pills themselves are made from thoroughly tested donor stool. The material is cleaned, freeze-dried, powdered, and packed into capsules designed to survive the journey through the stomach. The process strips away anything harmful, leaving behind only the bacterial strains that might save lives.
Dr. Chrysi Sergaki, head of microbiome research at the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, said the potential goes far beyond this one study. “We could potentially, in the future, replace antibiotics with microbiome [therapies],” she told the BBC. “That’s the big picture.”
There are more than 450 microbiome-based treatments currently in development. If even a fraction of them work, we may be entering an era where your next prescription isn’t for a pill made in a lab, but for one harvested, freeze-dried, and mailed straight from someone else’s gut.
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