Fecal Microbiota Transplant in the Treatment of Ulcerative Colitis

Summary

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of Fecal Microbiota Transplant (FMT) for treating patients with mild to moderate Ulcerative Colitis (UC). Even with the expanding choices of medication for UC, physicians and patients are still in search of highly effective and safe medications with minimal side effects. FMT has been approved for the treatment of a bacterial infection called Clostridium difficile. In this setting, FMT has been proven to be an effective and safe alternative therapy with zero reported serious adverse events from patients that have had this treatment. The providers that are conducting this study hypothesize that delivering microbes from a healthy human gut can help treat the damages caused by UC. This is done by "transplanting" fecal material, which contains a highly complex and dense community of healthy microbes, including bacteria, fungi and viruses. This collection of microbes is referred to as a microbiome. Preliminary studies suggest that alteration of the microbiome can help treat UC.

Timeline

Start

2015-12

Primary completion

2017-12

Completion

2018-09

Publications

• Crothers JW, Chu ND, Nguyen LTT, Phillips M, Collins C, Fortner K, Del Rio-Guerra R, Lavoie B, Callas P, Velez M, Cohn A, Elliott RJ, Wong WF, Vo E, Wilcox R, Smith M, Kassam Z, Budd R, Alm EJ, Mawe GM, Moses PL. Daily, oral FMT for long-term maintenance therapy in ulcerative colitis: results of a single-center, prospective, randomized pilot study. BMC Gastroenterol. 2021 Jul 8;21(1):281. doi: 10.1186/s12876-021-01856-9.

Drugs

Indications