A special liquid diet provides all essential nutrients vitamins minerals proteins carbohydrates and fatty acids and can relieve Crohn's disease symptoms without medication in just days. Exclusive enteral nutrition (EEN) has been successfully used for decades especially in children and adolescents as it reduces inflammation and supports growth. While also effective in adults symptoms often return within a year after therapy ends.

How can the effects of nutritional therapy be extended? Dirk Haller Professor of Nutrition and Immunology at TUM and Tobias Schwerd Head of Pediatric Gastroenterology at Dr. von Hauner Children's Hospital have identified a potential solution. Their research reveals how nutritional therapy alters the gut microbiome the complex community of microbes playing a key role in treatment success.

They discovered that medium-chain fatty acids in the liquid diet promote the growth of beneficial gut bacteria which help reduce inflammation. Further experiments in an artificial intestinal model showed that when stool samples from patients were treated with the liquid diet the microbiome adapted. When this adapted microbiome was transferred to mice no inflammation developed. However without prior adaptation the mice exhibited typical inflammatory symptoms.

Joint Study with Dr. von Hauner Children's Hospital at LMU Clinic
The research team is now launching a clinical study to determine whether this mechanism works in humans specifically whether a healthier microbiome can be intentionally established after a microbiome reset to prolong the inflammation-free state. To achieve this they are incorporating fecal microbiome transfer commonly known as stool transfer following nutritional therapy.

In this process thoroughly screened healthy donors provide microbiome samples which are then medically processed into capsules at the University Hospital of Cologne by Maria JGT Vehreschild, Professor of Infectious Diseases who is also involved in the study. Patients take these capsules after completing nutritional therapy.

Dirk Haller explains Microbiome transfer has already shown success in treating other intestinal diseases. We now hope it can become a new therapeutic approach for Crohn's disease.

Tobias Schwerd adds Our study focuses on three key questions: How safe is this therapy? How practical is it? And can it help stabilize patients preventing or delaying inflammation recurrence? If we can establish long-term healthy gut colonization it would be a major breakthrough in treatment.

source:https://www.tum.de/aktuelles/alle-meldungen/pressemitteilungen/details/klinische-studie-zu-neuer-therapie-bei-morbus-crohn