Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) groups a group of pathologies that includes ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease, among others, which mainly affects the intestine but also other parts of the body, and whose incidence in Spain is 16 cases for every 100,000 inhabitants, as revealed last year by a study in which the CIBER of Hepatic and Digestive Diseases (CIBEREHD) participated.
These chronic inflammatory diseases cause much discomfort for patients, who do not always respond well to available therapies. Now, a team of scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA) has conducted research that has shown that certain intestinal bacteria, properly equipped, can improve treatments for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), including the treatment Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. The results, which have been published in Science Advances, have shown that probiotic bacteria with a good backpack can work better to combat inflammation in the intestine.
The new study builds on a type of technology previously devised by its authors, which involves coating beneficial bacteria in a very thin protective layer to allow them to survive an onslaught of stomach acid and microbes long enough for them to establish themselves and multiply in the intestine of the mice in which they have been tested.
Mice with inflammatory bowel disease that received the full treatment experienced less weight loss and their colons shortened much less.
Although technology makes orally administered probiotics more effective, IBD is a complex disease that often involves more than just out-of-control gut microbial communities. “IBD is a complicated disease and you need to attack it from different angles,” said Quanyin Hu, a biomedical engineer and professor at the UW-Madison School of Pharmacy, who led the work.
So he and his team engineered nanoparticles aimed at neutralizing the molecules implicated in IBD and discovered a way to attach these nanoparticle backpacks to beneficial bacteria after enveloping them in the protective coating. These nanoparticle backpacks combined with the probiotics themselves could significantly improve IBD treatments, as well as simplify them.
A holistic treatment to relieve IBD symptoms
IBDs are triggered by different factors that science continues to study, but it is known that one of their causes is the overproduction of molecules known as reactive oxygen species, which are key for the human body to carry out certain functions, but which in an excessive amount in the intestine can cause harmful inflammation in the intestinal lining.
The nanoparticle backpacks that these scientists have developed are composed partly of sulfur –which targets reactive oxygen species directly– and partly of hyaluronic acid –which is a powerful anti-inflammatory–, and the study they have carried out in mice shows that the probiotic Escherichia coli Nissle 1917 bacterium covered in a protective shell and equipped with nanoparticle backpacks is significantly more effective in relieving IBD symptoms than its counterparts without the additional equipment.
Hu and his colleagues evaluated the effects of the treatments in two ways: by measuring changes in weight and changes in colon length in IBD mice, both those given the treatment and those receiving the treatment. they did not receive it. Mice with IBD, like affected people, tend to lose weight and have their colons shorten as the disease progresses, and the researchers found that the animals that received the full treatment had the least weight loss. weight and their colon shortened much less compared to those who received partial treatments or no treatment.
Treatment options currently depend on the severity of the disease and the stage it is in, but the authors of the new study say their goal was to create a more holistic treatment that could be effective at any stage. “That’s the most exciting part of this research for me,” says Hu. “We didn’t want to target a specific stage of IBD. We wanted to select the most important factors that contribute to curing or treating the disease at any stage.”
Another advantage of the new treatment is that it is administered orally, which could make it an alternative of choice to invasive IBD treatments, such as partial or total removal of the colon. However, despite the very promising results achieved in mice, it is still too early to test it in humans, and the team’s next step will be to see if the nanoparticle backpacks work well with other species of probiotic bacteria and if the treatment has side effects. adverse. In addition, in order for the treatment to be administered to patients, it is essential to simplify the process of creating and placing the nanopacks.
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