Improving Symptoms of Irritable Bowel Syndrome: Double-blind Randomized Control Trial

Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 2014:828137.
doi: 10.1155/2014/828137. Epub 2014 Aug 5.
Takeshi Kamiya et al.

According to the Japanese Society of Gastroenterology, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) accounts for about 10% of the Japanese population, making it a very common disorder. It has become clear that mucosal inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract and immune imbalance are involved in the development of IBS symptoms. In this study, therapeutic effects of BioBran in patients with IBS was evaluated in a double-blind Randomized Controlled study.

Forty patients with diarrheal predominant or mixed type IBS were randomly assigned to either the BioBran or placebo group and treated with 2 g/day of BioBran for 4 weeks. After completion of treatment, patients were asked to rate their subjective overall treatment effect, and fill out the Gastrointestinal Symptom Rating Scale (GSRS), to assess their quality of life. In addition, blood samples from the patients were collected before and 4 weeks after treatment with BioBran to evaluate amount changes in inflammation and immunological factors.

In terms of subjective treatment effects, 63.2% of subjects in the BioBran group responded “improved” in the global assesment, compared to 30% of subjects in the placebo group (Table 1). In the GSRS scores, the BioBran group showed significant improvement in the total, reflux, diarrhea, and constipation scores, while the placebo group showed no significant difference in any categories (Table 2). This indicates that BioBran is effective in improving symptoms in patients with IBS.
Further examination of changes in hematological and serological measurements in both groups revealed a significant increase in lymphocyte ratio, natural killer cell activity, B cells proliferation, and a significant decrease in neutrophils and C-reactive protein (CRP) in the BioBran group after intake (Table 3).

This indicates that the anti-inflammatory and/or immunomodulatory effects might be useful in IBS patients.

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