Patient initiative: Screening half a million stool donor applicants to find FMT (Fecal Microbiota Transplant) super-donors

[Michael Harrop]

My history:

• web.archive.org/web/20220801072636/https://old.reddit.com/r/HumanMicrobiome/comments/8sv31e/my_detailed_experiences_lessons_from_8_different/
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wi52tLjCps

I've been following the microbiome research, doing FMTs, and trying to find a highly effective donor for the past decade. I created HumanMicrobiome.info (see IBS section) to try to help other people get up to date on what I feel is the obvious crux of the issue. I tried to go through official channels for years to push for FMT clinical trials with high quality donors, but when that failed I took things into my own hands and started up HumanMicrobes.org.

I struggled for a while, then a video went viral on social media resulting in tens of thousands of stool donor applicants. After ~23,000 we tried the #1 ranked donor. Results were mediocre but many people improved. A while later we activated another donor, but still results haven't been spectacular.

Last year I raised prices & donor-payouts significantly. That seemed to be the necessary catalyst, and resulted in lots of viral videos and 500k+ stool donor applicants.

I've been surprised at how rare my ideal stool donor criteria are. I still haven't found an ideal donor, but I'm still working through all the applicants.

I would welcome collaboration from other research groups to assess our donors to try to figure out how to identify highly effective donors (IE: super-donors). Otherwise, it's up to us patients to continue to experiment and try to figure things out on our own.

Also, I'm spending a ton of time screening "average" people. My efforts to recruit the types of people I think are most likely to qualify - top athletes - haven't been very successful. So I would welcome assistance in that regard.