FDA gets to grips with faeces

摘要

The brown slurry is piped through tubes into the top of the human body — or the bottom. It can even come in pill form. For years, doctors have been transferring faeces into ill people's intestines to replace resident microbes with a fresh batch. The procedure is often a therapeutic success, but protocols for it vary wildly. As it steadily grows more popular, regulators are now working to define what a standard faecal transplant should be, and how to deliver one safely. During a public workshop last month at the US National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reaffirmed that it has authority over faecal transplants. The agency had said this for years to researchers and companies who asked privately, but the workshop was the first public forum in which the FDA broadcast that it regulates faeces like a drug.