So, a bit of background on fecal transplants. The idea is that you take the gut bacteria from a healthy donor, and put it in an unhealthy person's gut. This will make the recipient's metabolism/digestion more like the donor's. This has been found to work for weight loss; you give a normal-weight donor's microbiome to an overweight person, and they lose weight a significant fraction of the time.
So, when I read:
> the woman received a fecal transplant from her overweight but healthy daughter, via colonoscopy
I cringed. There are three things wrong with that. First: you don't need to use a relative, because fecal transplants don't have risk of rejection. Second, you wouldn't use a donor who's overweight. And third, it's normally done with a swallowed capsule, not with a colonoscopy, which adds risk and unpleasantness for no reason.
(Edit: The primary source says "With the occurrence of weight gain after FMT in this case, it is now our policy to use nonobese donors for FMT. The untoward consequences of using nonideal FMT donors are important, because patients may prefer to use a family member rather than an unrelated or unknown stool donor due to the perception that these sources are safer.")
Almost nothing you said is correct aside from your basic description of the procedure.
Weight loss is rarely the primary goal of FMT and its efficacy in that realm remains unproven. Nowhere did the article imply that any of the things that made you "cringe" are necessary. And oral administration isn't objectively better than the alternatives, nor is it always an option since many people understandably find the idea of swallowing a "poop pill" rather repulsive.
>>Weight loss is rarely the primary goal of FMT and its efficacy in that realm remains unproven.
Well, doesn't this case demonstrate that FMT can be used to have an effect on weight, albeit in the negative sense? So something is going on here, and while the science is unproven, it sure seems like this incident demonstrates that it has promise.
This donation occurred back in 2011, when it was still very unclear whether familial relations were important. We now know that there don't appear to be any additional risks for unrelated donations.
> This has been found to work for weight loss; you give a normal-weight donor's microbiome to an overweight person, and they lose weight a significant fraction of the time.
Do you have cite for this? I think there is some circumstantial evidence on this, but it's far from settled.
This woman was being treated for recurrent Clostridium difficile, not obesity. The weight gain was a side affect of the treatment, not the reason for it. Yes, people recently have started experimenting with fecal transplants to help with weight loss, but that's not what was happening here. The woman also picked her daughter because who wants a stranger's poop injected into their colon? No one... is pretty much the correct answer there. No one. Lastly, this was done in 2011, so... up the butt it went.
> Second, you wouldn't use a donor who's overweight.
Why? These transplants are so new and cutting edge that we don't know if taking from an obese person will be a bad or good thing, anecdotes like this might help us form an educated opinion, but it is too early to say for sure.
You certainly cannot say for sure if that was a mistake because few know that really...
If we're able to cure obesity using probiotics designed to wipe out existing gut bacteria and replace it with something designed to reduce the absorption of calories/carbohydrates/sugars, that would be a huge breakthrough.
As always, science doesn't happen via "Eureka!" but by "Well that's strange...".
> it's normally done with a swallowed capsule, not with a colonoscopy, which adds risk and unpleasantness for no reason.
Perhaps the patient opted for the colonoscopy the avoid the "unpleasantness" of swallowing a capsule of fecal matter. It may not taste like shit, but you know it is.
So, when I read:
> the woman received a fecal transplant from her overweight but healthy daughter, via colonoscopy
I cringed. There are three things wrong with that. First: you don't need to use a relative, because fecal transplants don't have risk of rejection. Second, you wouldn't use a donor who's overweight. And third, it's normally done with a swallowed capsule, not with a colonoscopy, which adds risk and unpleasantness for no reason.
(Edit: The primary source says "With the occurrence of weight gain after FMT in this case, it is now our policy to use nonobese donors for FMT. The untoward consequences of using nonideal FMT donors are important, because patients may prefer to use a family member rather than an unrelated or unknown stool donor due to the perception that these sources are safer.")