[MarianaM (OP)]

Elvis is wondering...

Some months ago you had program on the gut microbiome. In that program you said that people who have had their microbiome destroyed or depleted could now be given a fecal transplant from somebody with a healthy microbiome. My question is: could a person undergoing an operation, medical procedure or treatment (e.g. long-term use of antibiotics) which could or would damage their microbiome, have a fecal sample taken beforehand and then preserved for replacement at an appropriate later date, thus restoring their microbiome to its former health?

What do you think?

[evan_au]

Yes, I am sure this is possible:
- Take a fecal sample (just like a fecal transplant), and snap-freeze it in liquid nitrogen.
- Defrost the fecal sample, and reimplant it (just like a fecal transplant)
- Small cells can survive freezing better than large organs, provided you do it quickly, to avoid growth of ice crystals which will kill the cell
- Be aware that our microbiome is not usually exposed to liquid nitrogen, so some strains of bacteria will survice better than others.

You just need to find a medical clinic that is willing to do it.

Caveats
I am sure that the microbiome will be severely disrupted by:
- Radiation therapy
- Chemotherapy
- Intense courses of antibiotics.

But the microbiome is implicated in an increasing number of medical conditions.
- Your current microbiome may be the reason you need the course of antibiotics - you don't want to reinfect yourself later! So ensure that the infection is not present in the gut.
- There were even recent claims that tests in mice had shown that the progress of pancreatic cancer could be slowed by fecal transplant from long-term survivors of pancreatic cancer.
- So maybe rather than have a self-transplant, maybe get one from someone who survived your condition?

See: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6526613/