FMT and COVID-19, vaccines. Any concerns about COVID vaccination affecting FMT quality? Does it matter if the donor is vaccinated?

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Hoping4AFix

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Have read through the wiki and the forum and this hasn't been touched on, although I'm sure you would have touched on it somewhere on Reddit (can't find anything through Google).
 
FMT donor quality?

There is general info about vaccines here https://humanmicrobiome.info/immune-system.

I don't recall any good evidence that COVID vaccines would be an issue for FMT donors. Someone shared some links via email but they were poor quality. I think one was a retracted paper from S. Hazan about bifido being reduced.
 
Michael Harrop said:
FMT donor quality?

There is general info about vaccines here https://humanmicrobiome.info/immune-system.

I don't recall any good evidence that COVID vaccines would be an issue for FMT donors. Someone shared some links via email but they were poor quality. I think one was a retracted paper from S. Hazan about bifido being reduced.
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Thanks, I had skipped that page - had no idea there was vaccine stuff on it!

Reviewing what I'd seen previously, it appears that the covid vaccine and infection of the virus itself both have the potential to affect the gut, so not isolated to the vaccine.

I developed some kind of IBD condition a week after having a Moderna shot, so had it in my head that it likely had some impact on the microbiome, but probably a different mechanism.

Disregard I guess.

Thanks.
 
Hoping4AFix said:
so had it in my head that it likely had some impact on the microbiome, but probably a different mechanism
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As you said, both vaccines and the viruses they're made to protect against have the ability to impact the gut microbiome.
 
I have a question if the donor was vaccinated for Covid is it gonna transfer in their poop . If I ingest the poop will I get the vaccine too?
 
Firstly, keep in mind that there's no live virus in the vaccine, depending on the vaccine it's either a protein from the virus or a RNA molecule encoding a protein of the virus, neither of which can replicate in the human body. So the most there ever will exist is in that person's arm immediately after the shot, then it slowly gets cleared from the body over time.

So while it's theoretically possible (though unlikely) that a few of those molecules make it through the bloodstream of the vaccine recipient and into his or her digestive secretions, bile, etc. and get excreted in the feces, the concentration will be FAR lower than it is in the injection site in the person's arm. Our mucous membranes are exposed to foreign proteins from all sorts of organisms all the time, having a few coronavirus proteins touch them is not any different (and if you've been on Earth since 2020, you likely have had single particles of this virus somewhere on your body at some time).

I wouldn't worry about it too much even if the person was vaccinated yesterday--and if the vaccination was months ago then it's as if it never happened. I mean for the purposes of "second hand vaccination" like you seem to be implying--a vaccinated person is less likely to have gotten sick with COVID recently, and being sick with COVID may well have an impact on the microbiome, so in THAT sense it could possibly make a real difference, indirectly.
 
The issue shouldn't be whether or not you'd get a second-hand vaccination, but whether or not the vaccine activated the immune system in such a way as to negatively impact the gut microbiome.
 
Maybe some will find this info relevant but I've been looking at places around the world that do FMT and some offer the ability to select stool from donors who did not take the covid vaccine, and you can see what their overall vaccine status is in general as well. (I was just price shopping and researching how they find donors, stuff like that, not trying to jump into FMT just yet or anything, purely research). I haven't looked into the relevance of it past whats been mentioned here previously, like the bifido implications. I never got the vaccine but I do think I had covid right at the very very beginning, like Jan 2020 maybe, and it really messed me up bad. Couldn't breathe, lost sense of smell that never fully came back, and gut issues from then to now. I think I had epilepsy beforehand but only a seizure once a year or less, which then became one a day or more. Its generally under control now but... still sucks.
 
EpilepsyFMTcure said:
Maybe some will find this info relevant but I've been looking at places around the world that do FMT and some offer the ability to select stool from donors who did not take the covid vaccine, and you can see what their overall vaccine status is in general as well.
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Marco from Gezonde Darmflora says a lot of potential recipients ask him about this.

EpilepsyFMTcure said:
(I was just price shopping and researching how they find donors, stuff like that, not trying to jump into FMT just yet or anything, purely research).
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You should definitely try it. I found that I didn't really learn much of anything about which donors and methods worked for me until I started actually trying things. It's very easy to get stuck in "analysis paralysis" and not go anywhere, and reading other people's experiences can only get you so far (i.e. not very). I seriously wish I'd started experimenting back in 2019 (or earlier)--I've lost SO much time and so many opportunities in life, that I won't ever be able to fully get back.

EpilepsyFMTcure said:
I haven't looked into the relevance of it past whats been mentioned here previously, like the bifido implications. I never got the vaccine but I do think I had covid right at the very very beginning, like Jan 2020 maybe, and it really messed me up bad. Couldn't breathe, lost sense of smell that never fully came back, and gut issues from then to now. I think I had epilepsy beforehand but only a seizure once a year or less, which then became one a day or more. Its generally under control now but... still sucks.
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I also suspect I got a mild case back in 2020--a bit later than you, around the middle of March. At the time the word in my area was that there was no community spread, but I was working in an environment with a substantial number of people from abroad, including from Asia, some of which had been visiting there earlier in the year. The symptoms were rather unlike a typical cold for me--not worse, but different. I have since had confirmed COVID, in 2024, and it was indeed in some ways like that first illness, though with a significantly worse sore throat but less of a tickle in the lungs.

Nothing really changed dramatically in my health during that illness--but the dramatic worsening of my gut issues to the worst they've ever been happened sometime in mid-February, with actual stomach pain (which I'd never had before) being triggered out of the blue by bread I'd tolerated just fine up to then. It's possible that I'd already been exposed to the virus at that point but not gotten a true infection with respiratory symptoms yet--for sure some of the others at work who had that same "bug" before me were already coughing at that point. I never had any significant breathing issues with either infection, even though the confirmed case in 2024 I got from my dad, who developed pneumonia and was hospitalized briefly.
 
SFBayFMT5 said:
You should definitely try it.
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If you don't mind me asking, how were you able to try it? Is your biome good now? I'm asking because obviously if it were, I'd want to drive to meet you and try it myself. (Or fly. If you're actually in San Fran I have some cousins there I could stay with). But anyways that's my main problem is that I don't have anyone I could ask to try this. I mean, like Michael has mentioned, there isn't really a safe way to do it right now, but I'm just asking because I'm curious (and desperate). Don't worry either of you, I'm not going to do anything aside from ask questions for now.
 
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