US experts have called for the wider use of ‘stool banks’ for patients to store faecal matter from their younger, healthier selves to be used to rejuvenate their gut in later life. 

Much like cord blood banking, where parents can save their newborns’ umbilical cord blood, researchers argue for stools to be banked for potential future use in autologous faecal microbiota transplantation (FMT). 

The procedure is already used to treat Clostridioides difficile infections using donor samples and has shown promise for other gastrointestinal conditions. 

The team, from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard University in Boston, say there is already a non-profit stool bank in Massachusetts offering this service to insure against future C. difficile infection.