A human intervention study using Human Milk Oligosaccharides to improve Irritable Bowel Syndromesymptoms through targeting of the gut microbiota

肠易激综合征（IBS）是英国最常见的胃肠道疾病，也是一个主要的公共卫生/经济问题。它与一系列精神和身体症状和不适有关，然而，尽管进行了广泛的研究，但导致IBS病因的心理和生理因素仍然知之甚少。人类肠道中居住着数万亿的肠道细菌，这些细菌已知会影响人类健康和疾病。益生元和益生菌制剂已被证明可有效改善IBS患者的心理健康、肠道问题和生活质量，这证明了针对肠道微生物群的饮食干预对改善健康结果的影响。人乳寡聚物（HMO）是在人类母乳中发现的复合碳水化合物，专门刺激双歧杆菌（一种健康阳性菌属）。鉴于其促进健康的潜力，HMO越来越受到研究界的关注，特别是在成人发病的情况下，如IBS，其中其他治疗方法是可变的。我们最近进行的研究表明，HMO是非常有效的益生元，我们假设，饮食干预，如HMO有可能改善IBS患者的症状。这个博士项目需要一个跨学科的方法，以更好地了解HMO干预对IBS患者的影响。它将涉及体外和体内方法，以评估饮食干预对肠道微生物群的影响，以及随后对人类健康的影响。它将应用尖端技术（代谢和微生物分析），然后进行多变量统计分析，以确定HMO干预后微生物和代谢谱的变化，并提高对微生物以及健康状况变化所涉及的生物标志物/分子途径的认识。

Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) is the most common gastrointestinal disorder in the UK and a major public health/economic concern. It is associated with a range of mental and physical symptoms and discomforts, however despite extensive research, the psychological and physiological factors that contribute to the aetiology of IBS remain poorly understood. The human gut is inhabited by trillions of commensal bacteria that are known to impact on human health and disease. Prebiotic and probiotic supplementations have been shown to be effective in improving mental health, gut issues and quality of life in IBS, which demonstrate the impact of gut microbiota targeted dietary interventions in improving health outcomes. Human Milk Oligosaccharides (HMOs) are complex carbohydrates found in human breast milk that specifically stimulate bifidobacteria (a health positive genus). Given their health promoting potential, HMOs are of growing interest to the research community particularly in adult-onset conditions such as IBS, where other therapeutic approaches have been variable. We have conducted recent research showing that HMOs are highly efficacious prebiotics, and we hypothesise that dietary interventions such as HMOs have the potential to improve symptoms in IBS patients.This PhD project entails a cross-disciplinary approach to better understand the impact of HMO intervention in IBS patients. It will involve both in vitro and in vivo approaches to assess the influence of the dietary intervention on the gut microbiota, and subsequent impact on human health. It will apply cutting edge technologies (metabolic and microbial profiling) followed by multivariate statistical analysis to characterise the change in microbial and metabolic profile following HMO intervention, and improve knowledge of microbes as well as biomarkers/molecular pathways involved in changes to health status.