Fecal microbiota transplantation influences microbiota without connection to symptom relief in irritable bowel syndrome patients (Aug 2024, n=49) FMT

[Michael Harrop]

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41522-024-00549-x

They essentially took a low-quality donor, measured that the donors microbes colonized the recipient, but didn't improve symptoms. This shouldn't be surprising.

Abstract​

Imbalanced microbiota may contribute to the pathophysiology of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), thus fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) has been suggested as a potential treatment. Previous studies on the relationship between clinical improvement and microbiota after FMT have been inconclusive.

In this study, we used 16S rRNA gene amplicon and shotgun metagenomics data from a randomized, placebo controlled FMT trial on 49 IBS patients to analyze changes after FMT in microbiota composition and its functional potential, and to identify connections between microbiota and patients’ clinical outcome.

As a result, we found that the successful modulation of microbiota composition and functional profiles by FMT from a healthy donor was not associated with the resolution of symptoms in IBS patients. Notably, a donor derived strain of Prevotella copri dominated the microbiota in those patients in the FMT group who had a low relative abundance of P. copri pre-FMT. The results highlight the multifactorial nature of IBS and the role of recipient’s microbiota in the colonization of donor’s strains.

Click to shrink...

Interestingly, we found that at 12-week time point, patients who responded to the treatment were less similar to the donor as compared to the patients who did not respond

These results suggest that it matters which donor strains colonize the recipient and also how they function in the recipient’s ecosystem.

Click to shrink...

A healthy universal donor was a young male who underwent medical evaluation and laboratory tests for screening

While the donor of our trial was healthy and chosen based on the recommended criteria (EU consensus), we did not use any additional selection criteria such as the birth mode.

Regardless, our donor fulfilled six out of 11 criteria defining the “super-donor”.

Click to shrink...

Hilarious. They're using El-Salhy's criteria to define super-donor.

0 results for "adverse events". It doesn't appear that they tracked them at all.

What a joke.

And it's published in Nature, which is one of the most prestigious science journals. So this is what the research system considers to be "the best of the best". That makes this good evidence to support my statements/critiques here: https://forum.humanmicrobiome.info/threads/the-fda-and-fmt-regulation-part-2-jul-2024-humanmicrobes-org-i-met-wit.520/post-1370