gutsandgrowth

Home | About Jay Hochman -Pediatric Gastroenterology Blog | Archives

Correlation between Microbiome and Irritable Bowel Syndrome

May 8, 2017 7:00 am

I vaguely remember jokes that I heard as a teenager about computers that could analyze stool or urine and then come to remarkable conclusions about the person’s health or extramarital problems. Fast-forward a few decades and these jokes are not so far off.

A recent study (J Tap, M Derrien, et al. Gastroenterol 2017; 152: 111-23) describes an intestinal microbiome ‘signature’ associated with severity of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Thanks to Ben Gold for highlighting this article. (He placed this one on my desk: “Jay -FYI -It is all about the poop!”)

In this study, the authors collected fecal and mucosal samples from adult patients who met Rome III criteria for IBS. They started with an exploratory set of 149 subjects (110 with IBS, 39 controls). Subsequently, they used a validation cohort of 46 subjects (29 with IBS, 17 controls).

Key findings:

“By using classic approaches, we found no differences in fecal microbiota abundance or composition between patients with IBS vs healthy patients.” But, “a machine learning procedure, a computational statistical technique, allowed us to reduce the 16S ribosomal RNA data complexity into a microbial signature for severe IBS, consisting of 90 bacterial operational taxonomic units.”
This microbial signature showed IBS to be associated negatively with microbial richness, exhaled CH4, presence of methanogens, and enterotypes enriched with Clostridiales or Prevotella species. Figure 6 provides a graphic summary of the study and the microbial signature.
The authors note their findings were not explained by differences in diet or medications.
Overall, the microbial signature has a low sensitivity and thus at this point does not have clinical applicability.

My take: There are a number of studies showing that our gut microbiome is associated with numerous conditions, including IBS, inflammatory bowel disease, and metabolic syndrome. Having our poops analyzed by a computer to tell us what is wrong does not seem all that funny anymore.

Related blog posts: