McMaster Children’s Hospital opens Canada’s first pediatric stool bank

McMaster Children’s Hospital wants your kids’ poop — so they can add it to their frozen stool collection and use it to help other kids.

Their stool bench for children is the only one in Canada, according to Dr. Nikhil Pai, pediatric gastroenterologist at the hospital in Hamilton.

“We’re very proud of that, because we feel like we’re serving kids across the country,” he said in a phone interview.

The hospital opened it to offer fecal transplants to children across Canada with intestinal infections such as Clostridium difficile, also known as C. diff.

That infection is when a bacteria gets into the colon, which can cause diarrhea and fever. The infection can start while someone is taking antibiotics for another illness.

But Pai said there is a solution.

He can extract healthy bacteria from a donor’s stool and transplant it into patients via a five-minute enema, allowing the healthy bacteria to defeat C. diff and eliminate the stubborn bacteria for good.

Stool bench was “life-changing” for one family

Tanya Gillis told CBC Hamilton that the stool bench has been “life-changing” for her nine-year-old daughter, Kayleah Atkins.

When Atkins was born, she appeared perfectly healthy. Five weeks later she had her first attack.

“That’s how we learned she had a rare genetic condition,” Gillis said in a telephone interview from her home in Millville, NS.

The disorder is CDKL5, a neurodevelopmental disorder with a range of symptoms including low muscle tone and developmental problems, according to Boston Children’s Hospital.

Gillis said her daughter is non-verbal and non-mobile and also has gastrointestinal issues.

In 2020, Atkins developed C. diff., which was 14 months in the making.

“Nothing made her feel better…she had no quality of life,” Gillis said. “She just cried or was uncomfortable all day…it’s heartbreaking.”

That’s when Gillis learned about McMaster Children’s Hospital and its new stockpile of children’s poop.

Gillis and Atkins flew from Nova Scotia to Hamilton to perform a stool transplant.

Atkins was the program’s first patient. After the procedure, Gillis said her daughter became a “new boy.”

For everything else we’ve had to do so far… to see how easy [the transplant] was, and how it worked was insane,” she said.

Hospital looking for donors

Gillis said she hopes other children’s stools will open across the country.

Pai said barriers to having stool banks and fecal transplants for children include a lack of special pediatric programming, a lack of stool samples from children and the pandemic, which has caused some programs for adults to be halted.

Pai also said he is trying to develop the fecal transplants in tablet form so patients don’t have to travel to the hospital.

Meanwhile, Pai said there are currently 30 stool samples in the bank, but the hospital wants more.

Any healthy person between the ages of five and 18 can donate and will be compensated for this.

One stool donation can provide between five and ten treatments.