INVESTIGATING THE MICROBIOME OF DYSBIOSIS PATIENTS
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Investigating the Microbiome of Dysbiosis patients
IRAS ID
255793
Contact name
Anthony Buckley
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Leeds
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 7 months, 29 days
Research summary
Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), such as Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis, can be chronic long-term illnesses, which arise from an imbalance in the intestinal microbes, termed dysbiosis. In the U.K. approximately 260,000 people are diagnosed with IBD, with treatment costs approximately £4,000 per patient; however, this intestinal dysbiosis can reoccur leading to further medical complications, severely impacting patient health and mental wellbeing. Addressing the microbial imbalance is the focus of current IBD research, where clinicians have successfully used faecal transplant therapy to cure the microbial dysbiosis.
We have a triple stage chemostat gut model of the human intestine that has been shown to be clinically reflective with regards to human Clostridium difficile infection (CDI). Using this model, we have evaluated the propensity of antibiotics to either induce or treat CDI, and recently used several microbial based therapeutics to resolve recurrent CDI. Our model is highly reflective at modelling the microbial-microbial interactions and investigating the effects of antibiotics on the bacterial populations, and as such, is ideally placed to investigate therapeutics to resolve IBD.
In this study our overall aim is to set up a model of IBD-like microbial dysbiosis, to evaluate potential therapeutics. To do this we will characterise the microbial profiles of patients with diarrhoea, a marker of intestinal dysbiosis, from using excess diagnostic samples sent for routine analysis. We will obtain and use the antibiotic history of these patients to help inform us of the antibiotic dosing regimens to use in our gut model to generate a model of microbial dysbiosis. We will compare the microbial profile of these gut models to those typically seen in patients.REC name
East of Scotland Research Ethics Service REC 2
REC reference
18/ES/0148
Date of REC Opinion
20 Dec 2018
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion