March 31, 2016
A national, large-scale research project looking at gastrointestinal disease has been awarded $12.5 million from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Dr. Stephen Vanner, clinician-scientist at Kingston General Hospital and a professor at Queen’s University, will co-lead the project’s studies on Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS).
The IMAGINE Network , a new addition to the CIHR’s Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research program, will study the relationships between diet, gut bacteria and Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Inflammatory Bowel Disease. It will also study the links between IBS and IBD and depression and anxiety, which often occur with these gastrointestinal diseases.
More than 6 million Canadians suffer from Irritable Bowel Syndrome, and Inflammatory Bowel Disease is chronic, painful and lifelong, with significant impacts on quality of life. Individual drug treatments for the latter can cost $25,000 a year.
“We want to transform the management of these diseases,” says Dr. Vanner, Director of the Gastrointestinal Research Unit at Kingston General Hospital. “The premise is that food and gut bacteria interact to cause symptoms of IBS and IBD. Our goal is to understand these interactions and find treatments by altering one of both of these factors, and improve patient’s lives.”
Composed of 88 researchers at 17 centres, the network will assemble 6,000 patients and 2,000 healthy subjects across Canada, making it the largest- ever study group for GI disease in Canada. The aim is to develop new treatments, from dietary changes and probiotics to fecal transplants, antibiotics and other therapies that improve both physical and mental health of IBD and IBS sufferers.
“One of the challenges of this area of research is that studies tend to be limited to fewer than 50 patients, making it very difficult to establish links or find causes,” says Dr. Vanner, who is the co-lead, with Dr. Premek Bercik at McMaster University, to create and study a large national cohort of IBS patients . “This project will give us the large population we need to reach reliable conclusions.”
Dr. Vanner and Dr. Bercik will also study the effects of a diet low in some types of carbohydrates on Irritable Bowel Syndrome.
The lead researchers in the IMAGINE Network are Dr. Paul Moayyedi of McMaster University and Dr. Bertus Eksteen of University of Calgary
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