Faeces transplant may help relieve severe diarrhea: study

Among the volunteers in the non-transplant groups who had a relapse, 18 were later given a fecal transplant. It cured 15 of them, although four of the 15 needed two treatments.

"I've done 90 of these now in the last four and a half years," said Colleen Kelly of Brown University's Alpert Medical School, who was not connected with the study but uses fecal transplant in her practice.

"In patient after patient who has failed multiple courses of antibiotic, if you give them a dose of stool, they get better."

When side effects were tallied in the transplant group, 94 percent of patients reported diarrhea, 31 percent had cramping and 19 percent had belching, but all of those disappeared within three hours. Nineteen percent ultimately reported constipation after treatment.

Feces transplants may sound extremely distasteful, but the patients were desperate, Keller said.

"There was nothing else they could do. There was no psychological hurdle for them," he said.

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