humanmicrobes org
HumanMicrobes.org is a non-profit organization that aims to find healthy stool donors for Fecal Microbiota Transplants (FMT) and research. The organization is focused on the USA and Canada, but it accepts donors and recipients from all over the world.
The human gut microbiome is a vast ecosystem of trillions of microbes that plays a vital role in our overall health and well-being. Recent studies have revealed that the gut microbiome influences our health and traits as much as our genes. Unfortunately, the majority of people in modern society have a damaged gut microbiome, which can lead to various health issues.
FMT is a life-saving treatment for gut infections such as Clostridium Difficile (C. Diff), and it has shown promising results in clinical trials for many other conditions, including IBS, IBD, Parkinson’s disease, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), multiple sclerosis, autism, diabetes, and mental health disorders like depression, anxiety, and bipolar. FMT may also have potential applications in the cure of cardiovascular disease, obesity, autoimmunity, cancer, and more.
Human Microbes is focused on finding the less than 0.1% of people who have healthy, unperturbed, and disease-resistant microbiomes, making them high-quality stool donors. The easiest way to collect these gut microbes is via stool (poop), which can be used for research or FMT procedures.
However, identifying high-quality stool donors is challenging. Although some evidence suggests that highly effective stool donors exist in modern society, the vast majority of the population is in poor health, making it difficult to find ideal donors. Much of the microbiome is heritable, and the damage done to it compounds over generations, making it a climate-change-level threat.
Human Microbes is trying to solve this issue by finding extremely healthy individuals with "ideal" gut microbiomes, which prove to be highly effective for FMT for various conditions. The organization is rectifying the deficit by identifying healthy donors and connecting them with doctors, researchers, clinical trials, and individuals who need to re-balance their gut microbiome.
Finding high-quality donors is critical as nearly all clinical trials, doctors, stool banks, etc. are currently using low-quality donors. The effectiveness of FMT treatment largely depends on the quality of the donor's stool. Therefore, it is crucial to have high-quality donors to ensure the safety and effectiveness of the procedure.
Besides donor quality, completely replacing the recipient's established microbiome with the donor's microbiome is another challenge. Simply adding some microbes to an extremely complex ecosystem is not enough to replace it entirely. Many donor microbes do not take hold in the recipient, making it necessary to develop techniques to clear the intestinal mucosal lining and biofilms.
Human Microbes is helping to advance the field by solving the FMT donor-quality puzzle. The organization's efforts to find high-quality donors will help improve the safety and effectiveness of FMT and facilitate research into the gut microbiome.
In conclusion, HumanMicrobes.org is a non-profit organization focused on finding healthy stool donors for FMT and research. The organization's mission to identify high-quality donors and improve the safety and effectiveness of FMT is crucial in addressing the numerous health issues associated with a damaged gut microbiome. By advancing the field of microbiome research, Human Microbes is helping to improve the overall health and well-being of individuals worldwide.