Got chronic stomach problems? Maybe a fecal transplant is the answer!

As anyone who has watched a yogurt commercial knows, the balance of your intestinal bacteria is a delicate thing. Your intestinal flora are what help you digest your food, so if you don't have enough of one particular kind, you may find yourself suffering from a wide variety of stomach problems, from diarrhea to infections by harmful bacteria. And in our modern times, it's easy to wipe out your intestinal bacteria with a round of routine antibiotics.

A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine has introduced the fascinating concept of the "fecal transplant." The study particularly focused on people suffering from Clostridium infections. In a healthy person's gut, your normal intestinal bacteria help keep C. difficile from getting out of control. But if your healthy bacteria are wiped out, C. difficile can start running the show.

Persistent C. difficile infections are a serious problem, and are a factor in up to 100,000 deaths per year in the United States. To compound the problem, a C. difficile infection is usually treated with a round of antibiotics (which further damage your intestine's healthy bacteria).

This recent study took a different approach. Instead of the "nuke it from orbit" antibiotic treatments, they did a transplant of feces from a healthy person directly into the guts of their test subjects. These fecal transplants had the desired effect of recolonizing the subjects' intestines with healthy bacteria, which were then able to fight off the C. difficile infections without the unwanted side effects of vancomycin. In fact, the fecal transplants had a success rate of a whopping 94 percent, three times higher than for those who just took the vancomycin.

As effective as a poop transplant may be, I have to say that the most surprising effect is that it makes "eating Activia yogurt" actually sound like an appealing alternative.

Image courtesy Flickr/viviandnguyen_