The Role That Food and Bacteria Play in Generating Abdominal Pain

Summary

Irritable Bowel Syndrom (IBS) affects up to five percent of Canadians and has proven difficult to treat. Our research will explore how a type of dietary carbohydrate, called FODMAPS, contributes to chronic abdominal pain in irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). FODMAPs, are poorly digested carbohydrates and removing FODMAPs from the diet relieves abdominal pain in approximately half of IBS patients. Unfortunately, FODMAPs are contained in many foods, which makes it challenging for patients to remain on a low FODMAP diet for extended periods. Our proposed research will identify which subtypes of FODMAPs are most responsible for increasing pain and will tease apart whether the pain-causing effects of FODMAPs rely on the gut microbiota or not. To identify which specific type of FODMAP causes pain, IBS patients will adopt a low FODMAP diet and then individual FODMAP subtypes will be added back to their diet while monitoring changes to their pain. Stool samples will be collected from the participants to determine whether the composition of the gut microbiota or the chemicals that it produces are changed when symptoms are improved or exacerbated by manipulating FODMAP availability. In parallel studies, the microbiota of each IBS patient will be grown in specialized conditions to mimic the environment of the gut. These patient microbial communities will be exposed to the same FODMAP manipulations as the patients themselves experience. This will allow us to test whether the changes in gut microbiota composition and the chemicals produced that occur in IBS patients in response to FODMAP manipulations also occur when only the microbiota is exposed to these manipulations. Together, these studies will aim to optimize a dietary therapy for a common chronic pain condition and will provide novel insights into how diet affects the chemicals the gut microbiota produces that contribute to abdominal pain.

Conditions

• Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)

Interventions

OTHER

FODMAP Challenge

Prior to beginning the LFD, each participant will provide a stool sample. This will be used to inoculate a continuous culture system (chemostat) as these vessels maintain fecal microbial communities under controlled anaerobic conditions. After reaching steady state in culture media with FODMAPs (7 days), the media will be switched to a low FODMAP media for 7 days. Then each vessel will be exposed to the same FODMAP subgroups challenges and glucose challenge as the participants for 3 days. At each stage (i.e., steady state, after low fodmap media, after each challenge) culture supernatant will be collected. This supernatant will be used to test its neurophysiological effects on pain sensing neurons in pre-clinical studies. In addition, participants will provide a stool sample at each stage. Fecal supernatants will be produced from these samples and the neurophysiological effects of the fecal supernatants will be tested in pre-clinical studies.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Weston Family Foundation

  collaborator OTHER

• David Reed

  lead OTHER

Study Design

Allocation

NA

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

NONE

Model

SINGLE_GROUP

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Max Age

70 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2026-03-16

Primary Completion

2030-03-31

Completion

2031-03-31

Countries

• Canada

Study Locations