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If you could lose weight by letting a doctor inject a skinny person’s poop into your intestine, would you consider it?

As the science linking gut bacteria with a litany of human diseases explodes, University of Toronto researchers are exploring human-to-human stool transplants to combat obesity.

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The team has just completed the first phase of a $1.5 million, federally funded project that might ultimately offer obese people an alternative to costly, risky and radical gut-reconfiguring weight loss surgery.

Studies suggest people with obesity have different intestinal bacteria than those who don’t. Scientists believe different microorganisms living in the gut play a key role by acting on hormones that affect insulin sensitivity and the amount of calories absorbed from food.

The Toronto study comes on the heels of several animal studies showing that when germ-free mice — mice raised in ultra-sterile environments and free of intestinal bugs — are fed stool from obese mice, or obese humans, the animals put on more weight and body fat than those fed bacteria from the guts of lean mice or skinny humans.