The Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital yesterday said that, on Dec. 23, it had performed the first successful fecal microbiota transplant (FMT) on a liver transplant recipient in Taiwan.
The procedure was performed on a 52-year-old man surnamed Lee (李) who received a liver transplant at the hospital seven years ago, the hospital said.
Lee returned to work after receiving the liver transplant and was regularly taking a low dosage of anti-rejection medication, it said.
However, over the past three months, he had been experiencing diarrhea on average six times a day, the hospital said.
A stool culture found he had contracted a Clostridium difficile infection, it said, adding that he was hospitalized and given antibiotics, but his condition did not improve.
After discussions between the hospital’s FMT and liver transplant teams, doctors performed an FMT, the hospital said.
The procedure was performed through a colonoscopy, it said, adding that the patient’s condition has since improved.
Since October last year, the hospital has performed five successful FMTs after regulatory changes were made in September 2018, hospital gastroenterologist Tsai Ming-chao (蔡明釗) said.
The majority of the recipients were elderly patients with chronic conditions and imbalances in gut microbiota caused by long-term or high-dose antibiotic treatment, he said, adding that in all five cases, the healthy fecal microflora were provided by the Linkou Chang Gung Memorial Hospital.
Donors are legally required to receive physical examinations, and samples must be stored at certified labs, he said.
Cancer, surgeries, transplants, chronic illnesses, antibiotic usage and other factors can trigger C. difficile infections, he said, adding that he hopes the procedure will benefit more people.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not