Prof Borody now claiming his FMT treatment cures Crohn's (he's previously claimed his bacteriotherapy cures ME/CFS)

[Hip]

Prof Thomas Borody, at the Centre for Digestive Diseases in Australia, is now claiming in a new study that his faecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) can place Crohn’s disease into prolonged remission (an average of 8 years remission and counting). See this article:

Scientists claim to have CURED Crohn's disease after a treatment of antibiotics and faecal transplants sparks long-lasting 'profound remissions'

Prof Borody is the founder of the Centre for Digestive Diseases.


I am skeptical of Borody's work, because years ago he claimed a similar great success in treating ME/CFS using bacteriotherapy (his ME/CFS study is here). In his study he said his FMT resolved all symptoms of 58% of ME/CFS patients who had comorbid IBS. Which would be a miracle by any standards.

Yet at Borody's own clinic, the the Centre for Digestive Diseases, he does not appear offer bacteriotherapy or FMT treatment for ME/CFS. So his study claims to have found an amazing cure for ME/CFS, but mysteriously he is not offering this treatment?!

Clearly something is not right here. If he found a highly effective cure for ME/CFS, why is he not offering this therapy?

I actually wrote to Prof Borody, asking him about his bacteriotherapy ME/CFS study. I asked if he is still using his bacteriotherapy approach on ME/CFS patients, and if so, if he is still getting the same success rate? But I got no reply. All rather dubious.


So I am skeptical of Borody's latest work on Crohn's. We have to be careful that his papers are not just adverts for his own private clinic.

 

[ljimbo423]

Prof Thomas Borody, at the Centre for Digestive Diseases in Australia, is now claiming in a new study that his faecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) can cure Crohn’s disease. See this article:

Nowhere in his study does Borody say that he has cured Crohn's disease. He does mention "prolonged remission" but nothing that I could see about claiming he has cured it.

From the study-

Conclusions

Prolonged remission has been achieved for 3–23 years with individualised treatments, with the majority using AMAT ± infliximab and FMT. Treatment with antibiotics and/or FMT provides a potential new avenue for treatment of CD. These findings should stimulate thinking, investigations and better therapy against MAP and the dysbiosis of the gut flora, to enable higher rates of prolonged remission.

 

[Hip]

Nowhere in his study does Borody say that he has cured Crohn's disease. He does mention "prolonged remission" but nothing that I could see about claiming he has cured it.

OK, I've changed "cured" to "prolonged remission".

 

[kangaSue]

Most studies into the efficacy of FMT for Crohn's Disease have beeen based around a one off FMT treatment protocol and outcomess have been highly variable.

Dr Barody has always maintained that achieving clinical remission in CD with FMT requires multiple infusions and this protocol at the CDD has been quite effective for many CD patients, but only in the short term as most cases relapse in the longer term without some sort of ongoing active CD treatment.

The CDD's own statistics for long term remission of CD from FMT alone without ongoing maintenance treatments of some sort aren't all that flash if they can only find 3 cases from 350 patients treated. What I read into this latest study paper though is that Mycobacteriumavium subspecies paratuberculosis (MAP) may be the unknown quantity in CD pathology and the antibiotics side of things here could the "x" factor for attaining long term remission. That's something I gather Dr Barody himself must believe in too as, in the conflict of interest statement at the bottom of the paper, you will note that he has filed patents for antibiotic therapies in Crohn’s disease and faecal microbiota transplant.

It's increasingly being accepted that Mycobacteriumavium subspecies paratuberculosis (MAP) plays a role in the pathology in Crohn's disease (CD), as evidenced by detection of the bacteria in the blood and intestinal tissue from some patients with CD, but there are inherent difficulties in testing for this so MAP is not always picked up when tested for in CD patients. MAP though is also known to cause gut dysbiosis and FMT can address that imbalance if antibiotics are clearing up the MAP infection.

Interestingly TNF alpha inhibitors can exacerbate MAP infection
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30073091?dopt=Abstract