Guardian7 said...
Because his doctor is as likely to help him as my houseplant is. :)
Latest figures for FMT success rates for UC hovered around 60-70%. Better than any other therapy out there.
I think researching it and learning about bowel health is the first step to success, IMO.
There has not been a 60-70% "remission" rate from FT. That is the percentage of folks who show short term symptom improvement. Remission rate in the few reliable studies, is well below 30%. Also the few studies done had limited followup, often as short as 4 weeks.
I think FT/probiotics show promise, but it is frustrating to see language that seems to suggest a much stronger/certain benefit that science has found so far.
There are case-reports, and other anecdotal accounts, of long term relief. It is not clear how much these results are due to placebo, other meds, or undiagnosed c.diff.
Good studies have much more modest results than the anecdotal accounts - but they show some small average benefit, which means a few people get real good results. Likely there is a subgroup of people and/or an optimal level of flaring, when FMT helps most. Research needs to discover this.
This probiotic treatment, and probiotics in general, seem to have a lot of promise for treating UC. But it is not yet clear what works, for whom, or under what circumstances.
If I fell back into a chronic flare I might consider FT, depending on what else was in the pipeline at such time.