In 2020, a remarkable case report was published entitled

Rapid Improvement in Alzheimer's Disease Symptoms Following Fecal Microbiota Transplantation.

The FDA allows the use of fecal transplants for the treatment

of recalcitrant infections of a bad bug known as C. diff. Serendipitous improvements

following such transplants across a range of conditions have been reported, including

autism, baldness, multiple sclerosis. The dementia report involved an 82-year-old man with a five-year history of gradually declining

memory and cognition.

His mini mental state examination score was 20 out of 30, indicating mild cognitive impairment.

But two months after receiving a fecal transplant from his wife, his score was 26,

which is considered normal cognition. By month six post-transplant, the patient achieved a near-perfect

score of 29, and he also reported to market improvement in mood, social interaction, and

expressiveness. The potential role of gut flora in Alzheimer's is not completely out of left field,

butyrate, which is what our good gut bugs produce when we eat fiber,

is absorbed from our colon into our bloodstream and can cross the blood-brain barrier

and improve the memory function of mice and rats.

In people, the microbiomes of Alzheimer's patients have been found to have fewer good

bugs, buterate-producing bugs, and more bad bugs, the pro-inflammatory bugs.

One reason this isn't just dismissed as a simple consequence of poorer, lower fiber diets,

is that mice transplanted with stool from an Alzheimer's patient

performs significantly worse on cognitive tasks

than those fed fecal samples from non-demented individuals.

Could it be that fecal transplants actually help? We'll find out soon

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