Local TV news station KHOU (channel 11) in Houston is reporting that the FDA has given the green light to expand a Fecal Microbiota Transplantation (FMT) study at UTHealth to include Parkinson’s.
The study is being performed at the Kelsey Research Foundation UTHealth Center for Microbiome Research in Houston, Texas.
The idea behind FMT is that good bacteria in healthy stool samples is transferred to an unhealthy individual to repair whatever is going wrong in the gut.
In a UTHealth lab, the stool samples are mixed with saline, filtered twice, freeze dried, then put in capsules. The basic transplant takes place in pill form.
As the pathogenesis of Parkinson’s Disease is still unknown, there are many questions as to whether this treatment would have any effect on PD. Most of the current FMT efforts are focused on treatment of C. diff.
FMT Parkinson’s research thus far has been mainly on mouse models
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29471030
A clinical trial is also recruiting in Belgium: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03808389