The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the first pill manufactured from donated human poop, the agency announced Wednesday (April 26). It’s the second human poop-derived treatment ever approved; the first was an enema-based treatment cleared for use in December 2022.
Previously, such “fecal microbiota transplants” were considered investigational treatments and were therefore harder for patients to access and often not covered by insurance.
Like the approved enema treatment, the newly approved pill, called Vowst, also contains live bacteria and has been approved for use in people ages 18 and older as a preventive treatment for recurrent infections with the bacterium Clostridioides difficile . Called C. diff for short, this infection is often acquired in health care settings after patients have taken antibiotics for a different infection.