荷兰新开一家“便便银行”
Everyone is familiar with calls to donate blood, sperm, stem cells, bone marrow and organs, but the opening of a new 'poo bank' in the Netherlands means it is now possible to donate your faeces.
献血、捐精、捐献干细胞、捐骨髓、器官捐赠……这些你可能都听说过，不过最近荷兰新开了一家“便便银行”，这意味着上面的各种捐赠中又要多一项：捐便。
The "poo bank", more formally referred to as the Dutch Donor Faeces Bank (NDFB), opened recently at the Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC).
The faeces deposited at the NDFB is invaluable for those living with Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) -- a bacterial infection which can affect the digestive system. In the Netherlands there are 3,000 reported C. difficile cases a year, usually occurring after using antibiotics to treat other illnesses.
Although the infection often results in few symptoms, in approximately five per cent of patients it can recur as a regular infection. Symptoms for them include three to five bouts a day of usually foul-smelling, watery diarrhoea, sometimes blood-stained, accompanied by abdominal cramping and pain.
For such unfortunate sufferers faecal transplants are the only effective treatment.
Ed Kuijper, a professor at the LUMC explained:
"The effectiveness of faecal transplants in patients with a Clostridium difficile infection was proven in 2013. Since then, the treatment has been included in national and international guidelines."