33 Answer Key
Question: What was the role of Mesalazine in FMT treatment? Why was it administered a week prior?
The role of Mesalazine in FMT treatment was to suppress any inflammation that was to occur post treatment and thus increase the chances of remission form Chron’s disease.
It was taken one week prior to eliminate it as a confounding variable within the study.
Question: What are the advantages for utilizing FMT over surgery?
We can avoid the complications associated with surgery such as the recurrence of disease and short bowel syndrome
Question: Why is it important to have standard procedures in experiments?
This is to ensure that experiments are replicable and that the results of one experiment can be independently verified by another. Without standard procedures, the results could change and people can question its efficacy.
Thinking Question: Why would scientists be so interested in using FMT to treat diseases?
The diseases that we use FMT to treat are caused by a disruption of the normal microbiota. By using an FMT, we can reintroduce and restore the normal microbiota which can help treat the disease without any complications.
Thinking Question: Consider the major differences between a negative and a positive control. Would you use a negative control, a positive control or both controls for this single center pilot study? Explain your answer.
For the best results, both the positive and negative controls should be used. A negative control or a placebo can ensure there are no hidden factors that could affect the improvement of Crohn’s Disease when being treated with FMT. A positive control can ensure that the FMT procedure has successfully established in the patient by using a previous donor’s fecal microbiota that has results that have been concluded as a successful remission. In a positive control, the treatment is expected to work, and if the FMT treatment worked, then the remission seen in the FMT treatment should be similar to the positive control. The positive control can also be seen as a “normal” to test if the FMT treatment worked.
Thinking Question: Why do you think that there is so much variety in level of response to the treatment? What do you think this study could have done to eliminate this?
FMT treatment aims to alter a disregulated microbiota with the infusion of fecal matter, and since everyone’s microbiota is different, will respond differently to infusions. Crohn’s disease is also a complicated chronic disorder and while the symptoms are similar, the underlying cause may be very different for people (bacterial infection, heightened immune response, genetic propensity) and it may be difficult to provide a general cure. Within the context of this study, the authors matched donor fecal samples to patients as opposed to creating an infusion of samples to distribute to patients. Donor samples vary from each other in terms of bacterial populations, and the researchers in this study could have avoided this by homogenizing the donor samples together and distributing one source of FMT.