{"id":10343,"date":"2016-10-26T07:15:35","date_gmt":"2016-10-26T07:15:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/?p=10343"},"modified":"2016-10-26T07:15:35","modified_gmt":"2016-10-26T07:15:35","slug":"dr-besteds-experience-of-treating-gut-symptoms-in-mecfs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/dr-besteds-experience-of-treating-gut-symptoms-in-mecfs\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr Bested’s experience of treating gut symptoms in ME\/CFS"},"content":{"rendered":"

Altered Gut Microbiome in ME\/CFS<\/a>, by Alison C Bested, October 2016<\/p>\n

In 2007 as a doctor specialized in treating patients with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME)\/
\nChronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), I was curious to see if there was a relationship of the patients’\u00a0irritable bowel symptoms and their degree of fatigue and pain. Clinically I had noticed that\u00a0when parasites were found in a patient’s stool and treated, that afterwards, often in addition\u00a0their fatigue going up a notch, sometimes their headache pain and general pain symptoms\u00a0improved. I was intrigued.<\/p>\n

Dr. Alan Logan was able to secure private funding to look at a small\u00a0group of my patients with ME\/CFS and irritable bowel symptoms. We had 20 patients as\u00a0controls and 20 patients that we treated with billions of probiotic bacteria: Lactobacillus casei\u00a0strain Shirota for two months. We were hoping to see improvements in fatigue and pain in the
\npatients.<\/p>\n

There was a rise in Lactobacillus levels as expected with the supplementation given to\u00a0the patients. We were surprised to see an increase in the Bifidobacterium levels. We do not
\nsee improvement in their fatigue or pain levels. With experience, looking back, a two month\u00a0protocol for supplementation with a probiotic was far too short a time.<\/p>\n

What did surprise us was that the patients who were treated with a probiotic had significant\u00a0improvement in their anxiety scores. It was possible that the decreased anxiety was a direct\u00a0result of improved bowel function. We postulated that perhaps this was an example of enteric\u00a0neuroscience with the bowel communicating directly with the brain through the vagal nerve.<\/p>\n

Perhaps, we wondered, if by changing the microbiota in the bowel, it helped to restore normal\u00a0intestinal health, decrease intestinal permeability, reduce inflammation and cytokines and\u00a0indirectly reduce anxiety. We knew that there was lots of room for further studies in this area.<\/p>\n

A Venket Rao, Alison Bested, Tracey Beaulne, Martin Katzman, Christina Lorio, John Berardi,\u00a0 Alan Logan. A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled pilot study of a probiotic in\u00a0 emotional symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome<\/em><\/a>. Gut Pathogens, 2009, 1:6.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 DOI: 10.1186\/1757-4749-1-6<\/p>\n

I was thrilled with this new article about gastrointestinal disturbances or irritable bowel
\nsyndrome and altered microbiota in patients with ME\/CFS. Gastrointestinal disturbances are\u00a0present in many patients with ME\/CFS. According to the article by Giloteaux et al. dysbiosis or\u00a0altered gut microbiome (types and numbers of bacteria present in the gut) is present in\u00a0patients with ME\/CFS. Dysbiosis of the gut microflora may contribute to ongoing symptoms of\u00a0inflammation in patients with ME\/CFS.<\/p>\n

Potentially, in the future, this could lead to better\u00a0investigation and treatment for symptoms of dysbiosis or IBS in patients with ME\/CFS.<\/p>\n

Ludovic Giloteaux, Julia K. Goodrich, William A. Walters, Susan M. Levine, Ruth E. Ley and\u00a0Maureen R. Hanson. Reduced diversity and altered composition of the gut microbiome in\u00a0individuals with myalgic encephalomyelitis\/chronic fatigue syndrome<\/em>.<\/a> Microbiome (2016)\u00a04:30 DOI 10.1186\/s40168-016-0171-4<\/p>\n

Alison C. Bested MD FRCPC
\nHematological Pathologist
\nClinical Associate Professor
\nFaculty of Medicine
\nUniversity of British Columbia<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Altered Gut Microbiome in ME\/CFS, by Alison C Bested, October 2016 In 2007 as a doctor specialized in treating patients with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME)\/ Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), I was curious to see if there was a relationship of the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[2917,3233,1325,608,610],"class_list":["post-10343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-dr-alison-bested","tag-gut-dysbiosis","tag-gut-microbiome","tag-ibs","tag-irritable-bowel-syndrome"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5qkYK-2GP","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10343"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10371,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10343\/revisions\/10371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}