A research team at the University of Minnesota’s College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences examined how a person’s diet impacts their gut microbiome through fecal microbiota transplants, or FMTs, according to a University press release.
FMTs are used to cure or provide relief for a multitude of conditions, including Crohn’s disease, ulcers in the colon and rectum, metabolic disorders and immune disorders, Levi Teigen, the study’s lead author, said.
Amanda Kabage, who works in microbiota therapeutics at CFANS, said the gut microbiome is considered a living organ consisting of bacteria, viruses and fungi living in the gut.
The transplant consists of taking a fecal transplant from a healthy donor and making it into a pill with microbes separated from the donor’s feces, Teigen said. The pill is administered orally or via colonoscopy, depending on the patient’s health.
If a patient has a chronic illness, like Crohn’s, it is recommended to receive the pill via colonoscopy.
For the pills to withstand stomach acids and make it to the intestines, patients do not eat for several days before and after taking the pill so the treatment works, Kabage said.
Kabage said becoming a stool donor for FMTs is very difficult. A donor needs to maintain a good diet that promotes gut health by eating lots of fiber and fermented foods.
Teigen said fiber is important to the diet because it takes longer for the body to break down.
“The more processed something is, the more rapidly it’s able to be absorbed and so a lot of food can be absorbed in just the small intestine and nothing makes it to the large intestine,” Teigen said. “Fiber is important to be eating to help make it to feed the microbes.”
In addition to eating high fiber or fermented foods, Teigen said eating whole or unprocessed foods is another way to maintain good gut health.
The microbes from the healthy gut are then introduced to the patient’s microbiome to foster a healthier gut ecosystem, Teigen said. When creating the pills, scientists carefully craft them to contain a specific amount of microbes to fit each patient’s unique needs and conditions.
“It very much mimics a drug,” Teigen said. “You can give a specific dose of microbes, but the microbes are still, in fact, the complete community of microbes that are found in stool.”
Scientists are still working to understand the differences between a healthy gut microbiome and an unhealthy one, but a healthier gut has diverse microbes and bacteria, Kabage said.
“In diseases like ulcerative colitis or Crohn’s, it’s harder to change the microbiome because you’re fighting against what you already have,” Kabage said. “So while there is potentially less diversity, donations from a healthy donor try to push past that and make it more diverse.”
In the study, Teigen said he and his team are trying to figure out if a healthy gut diet for both the donor and patient will continue to improve the patient’s gut health post-transplant.
“We’re not exactly sure what effect the microbiome is having,” Teigen said. “The impact could be as simple as a specific function of the microbiome getting transplanted, regardless of how many specific microbes from the donor stuck around as long as this one specific function is provided. We’re still trying to figure it out.”