Investigating the Gut Microbiome’s Role in Health & Disease using Irritable Bowel Syndrome as a Disease Model

We are in phase 2 of recruitment of IBS patients with matched household controls, collecting clinical information, faecal, urine & blood samples. Data from phase 1 resulted in two publications (Vervier et al, Gut 2022 and Conley et al, EbioMedicine 2024) which identified using shotgun metagenomics a sub-group of IBS patients with an altered gut microbiome and metabolome. This sub-group had a positive clinical response to dietary intervention, which also resulted in a shift in the microbiome and metabolome towards their household controls. With phase 2 we hope to collect a larger cohort of patients and perform further shotgun metagenomic analysis. We want to validate the previous findings and focus on the functional elements of the microbiome. As part of this study we want to collate data from publicly available studies to perform a meta-analysis of shotgun metagenomic sequencing of IBS gut microbiomes.