Transplanting poop can be beneficial—swapping vaginal fluids may be even better

Enlarge / Arum lily / Calla lily (credit: Getty | Flowerphotos)

In the afterglow of successful fecal transplants, researchers are now sniffing around vaginal fluids for the next possible bodily product to improve health-and they're roused by the possibilities.

Vaginal fluid transplants could "revolutionize the way we view and treat conditions affecting the female reproductive tract," researchers at Johns Hopkins wrote in a recent study on vaginal microbiota transplants (VMTs). If they work as researchers hypothesize, they could rub out many common problems at once. And based on what we know of vaginas, they could be far less messy than transplants involving poop.

Microbial muck

The basic idea behind VMTs is identical to that of poop transplants, aka fecal microbiota transplants (FMTs), which have been around for centuries. Generally, FMTs aim to use microbe-laden bodily products-in this case excrement-to introduce or restore rich, complex microbial communities into the innards of ailing recipients.

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