New details emerge in case of first death from fecal transplant

A 73-year-old man with a compromised immune system this spring was the first person to die from a rare, drug-resistant E. coli bacteria after receiving a stool transplant, and new details published in NEJM yesterday say the man had been a participant in a clinical trial being run by Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He had received fecal transplant capsules in November from a single donor, and scientists just revealed that 21 other people also received capsules from the same batch. One other person thus far has become sick from the capsules, but has recovered. Others also tested positive for the bacteria but haven’t fallen ill. In January, MGH began screening would-be donors for such bacteria, but it didn’t test capsules that had been made before then.