London researchers recruit for an anorexia trial of fecal microbiota capsules
Co-leads Dr. Elizabeth Osuch and Jeremy Burton will test whether capsules from healthy donors can restore gut bacteria and change how people make food choices.
A new clinical trial is recruiting people diagnosed with anorexia nervosa to test whether fecal microbiota transplant capsules can help manage the disorder. It is led by researchers at the London Health Sciences Centre Research Institute, the Lawson Research Institute of St. Joseph’s Health Care London and Western, and it has no results yet.
Dr. Elizabeth Osuch, a professor of psychiatry and medical biophysics, and Jeremy Burton, a microbiologist who is interim vice-president research at St. Joseph’s, co-lead the study. They will test whether capsules made from healthy donor stool can restore the gut microbiome, improve nutrition and change how people make food choices.
The Lawson FMT team, led by Dr. Michael Silverman and Seema Nair Parvathy, screens the donors and turns the samples into tasteless, odourless pills customized for this study. Burton said eating disorders can be stubbornly difficult to treat even with therapy, nutritional counselling and medical monitoring.
Chapter 03 · Science & TechnologyRead it in the issue →
