Evaluation of the Levels of Metabolites in Feces of Patients with Inflammatory Bowel Diseases

— Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), which include ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn’s disease (CD), are chronic intestinal inflammatory disorders with only partially known etiology. They are characterized by chronic recurrent inflammation of the intestinal mucosa and lead to a significant decrease in the quality of life and death of patients. IBD is associated with suppression of normal intestinal microflora, particularly, a decrease in the number of bacteria—producers of short chain fatty acids (SCFAs) that exhibit anti-inflammatory and protective properties. Among various methods used for correction of intestinal microflora, fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) attracts particular attention. FMT consists of the infusion of a fecal suspension from a healthy donor to the intestinal tract of a recipient patient. Such treatment is usually accompanied by a positive therapeutic effect with the restoration of the normal intestinal microflora of the recipient patient. A significant drawback of this method is the lack of standardization. Evaluation of metabolites produced by intestinal microflora, particularly, SCFAs, may be used for objective assessment of the functional state of the intestinal microbiota and, consequently, the success of the FMT procedure. Using gas chromatography and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, we have analyzed the concentrations and molar ratios of SCFAs from feces of 60 healthy donors. The results obtained by these two methods were in good accord with each other and with the published data. The analysis of SCFAs in the feces of patients with UC (19 patients) and CD (17 patients) revealed a general decrease in the concentration of SCFAs in the studied groups as compared with controls and significant fluctuations in the values of the studied group. Using limited sets of IBD patients (6 patients with UC and 5 patients with CD) we determined concentrations of SCFAs before and within 30 days of observation after FMT. In the selected time period, FMT exerts an effect on the SCFAs levels. Despite the fact that within 30 days of observation the SCFAs profiles, specifically attributed to healthy donors, have not been fully restored, the tendency to their achievement was clearly observed in both sets of UC and CD patients.