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FRIMEDBIO-Fri prosj.st. med.,helse,biol

The role of Blastocystis in inflammatory bowel disease.

Alternative title: Rollen til Blastocystis i inflammatorisk tarmsykdom.

Awarded: NOK 6.3 mill.

When people suffer from severe intestinal problems, the hospital often examines the patient's stool to look for clues. If the hospital lab finds small organisms called microbial eukaryotes, they are often thought to be the cause of the disease and the patient is given medication to eliminate these parasites. This proposal focuses on one such parasite called Blastocystis because we have doubts about whether it is actually a parasite. Previous studies using small groups of people have found this ‘parasite’ in a large proportion of people without intestinal problems. Also, when we give this parasite to rats that have severe intestinal disease, symptoms are less severe compared to rats that have not been given Blastocystis. To prevent people being treated for something that did not make them sick, we want to investigate this matter thoroughly. We will be looking for the distribution of Blastocystis in a large Danish study group that includes over 7,000 people. This background population will be the largest study of the distribution of Blastocystis ever. We will also be looking for Blastocystis in a large 700 patient Norwegian clinical trial of inflammatory bowel disease. We will also try to find out whether cancer patients receiving immunotherapy are more or less likely to develop severe bowel disease (as an adverse side effect) if they have Blastocystis or not. Finally, we will conduct comparative studies in a rat model that we can infect with Blastocystis and then induce bowel disease, as this will allow us to study in a controlled manner whether Blastocystis makes symptoms better or worse. We hope that our thorough investigations with a large interdisciplinary team of clinicians, molecular biologists, epidemiologists, and animal scientists will eventually allow us to inform hospitals whether they should treat patients when they find Blastocystis or whether they need to look further for the real cause of the patients' symptoms.

When people suffer from severe intestinal problems, the hospital often examines the patient's stool to look for clues. If the hospital lab finds small organisms called microbial eukaryotes, they are often thought to be the cause of the disease and the patient is given medication to eliminate these parasites. This proposal focuses on one such parasite called Blastocystis because we have doubts about whether it is actually a parasite. Previous studies using small groups of people have found this ‘parasite’ in a large proportion of people without intestinal problems. Also, when we give this parasite to rats that have severe intestinal disease, symptoms are less severe compared to rats that have not been given Blastocystis. To prevent people being treated for something that did not make them sick, we want to investigate this matter thoroughly. We will be looking for the distribution of Blastocystis in a large Danish study group that includes over 7,000 people. This background population will be the largest study of the distribution of Blastocystis ever. We will also be looking for Blastocystis in a large 700 patient Norwegian clinical trial of inflammatory bowel disease. We will also try to find out whether cancer patients receiving immunotherapy are more or less likely to develop severe bowel disease (as an adverse side effect) if they have Blastocystis or not. Finally, we will conduct comparative studies in a rat model that we can infect with Blastocystis and then induce bowel disease, as this will allow us to study in a controlled manner whether Blastocystis makes symptoms better or worse. We hope that our thorough investigations with a large interdisciplinary team of clinicians, molecular biologists, epidemiologists, and animal scientists will eventually allow us to inform hospitals whether they should treat patients when they find Blastocystis or whether they need to look further for the real cause of the patients' symptoms.

Funding scheme:

FRIMEDBIO-Fri prosj.st. med.,helse,biol

Funding Sources