Project description:Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is the most prevalent functional gastrointestinal disorder worldwide, and the most common reason for referral to gastroenterology clinics. However, the pathophysiology is still not fully understood and consequently current management guidelines are very symptom-specific, leading to mixed results. Here we present a study of 88 individuals with IBS who had baseline sequencing of their gut microbiome (stool samples), received targeted interventions that included dietary, supplement, prebiotic/probiotic, and lifestyle recommendations for a 30-day period, and a follow-up sequencing of their gut microbiome. The study's objectives were to demonstrate unique metagenomic signatures across the IBS phenotypes and to validate whether metagenomic-guided interventions could lead to improvement of symptom scores in individuals with IBS. Enrolled subjects also completed a baseline and post-intervention questionnaire that assessed their symptom scores. The average symptom score of an individual with IBS at baseline was 160 and at the endpoint of the study the average symptom score of the cohort was 100.9. The mixed IBS subtype showed the most significant reduction in symptom scores across the different subtypes (average decrease by 102 points, P = 0.005). The metagenomics analysis reveals shifts in the microbiome post-intervention that have been cross-validated with the literature as being associated with improvement of IBS symptoms. Given the complex nature of IBS, further studies with larger sample sizes, more targeted analyses, and a broader population cohort are needed to explore these results further.
Project description:Small bowel adenocarcinoma is a clinically and anatomically distinct gastrointestinal cancer that lacks prospective data to support its optimal management. Patients with inflammatory bowel disease and inherited conditions that cause gastrointestinal polyps are at especially high risk. Due to a lack of effective surveillance programs resulting in missed or delayed diagnoses only when symptoms develop, this disease is generally discovered at an advanced stage. Surgical resection is the only treatment modality with a chance of cure. Currently accepted treatment considerations are often generalized from large bowel and pancreatic-biliary cancers, due to some anatomic and clinical parallels. Additional research, however, is desperately needed to characterize the unique molecular differences of this disease to better prognosticate patients and establish rational clinical trials that would improve their outcomes.
Project description:miRNA profiling study revealing novel miRNAs deregulated in SBNET compared to normal small bowel and identifying miRNA that are differentially regulated with disease progression. These have the potential to be used in the future for patient stratification and treatment response monitoring.
Project description:Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a multifactorial disease including both genetic and environmental factors. We compared the diversity of intestinal microbesamong a cohort of IBD patients to study the microbial ecological effects on IBD. Fecal samples from patients were sequenced with next generation sequence technology at 16S rDNA region. With statistical tools, microbial community was investigated at different level. The gut microbial diversity of Crohn's disease (CD) patients and colonic polyp (CP) patients significantly different from each other. However, the character of ulcerative colitis (UC) patients has of both CD and CP features. The microbial community from IBD patients can be very different (CD patient) or somewhat similar (UC patients) to non-IBD patients. Microbial diversity can be an important etiological factor for IBD clinical phenotype.
Project description:Validation of the methodology for extracting and demonstrating the quality of the ability to profile RNA in sperm of rhesus macaques.