There were no guidelines for stool transplants. Then, a patient is dead.



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In June, after one patient died and another patient from a fecal transplant containing a drug-resistant bacterium, another patient fell ill, the Food and Drug Administration intervened and fixed new guidelines for the procedure.

The guidelines specified that donors and their stools should be screened for the presence of "multidrug-resistant organisms". They were included in an alert issued by the agency stating that the two patients who became ill had a weakened immune system and that the stools they received had not been tested for the specific superbug that had made them sick.

But no additional information about the cases was provided, such as how the stool was treated, how it was distributed to patients or what it was used to treat.

The announcement raised more questions than she answered. Chief among them: what happened exactly in both cases? And, given the growing threat posed by drug-resistant bacteria, why are these guidelines not already in place?

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