Table 1.
The intervention plan and timing of the visits.
Fig 1.
Study flow chart.
Fig 2.
Dysbiosis index of the donors before fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) and for the patients before FMT (day 0) and following FMT (weeks 1, 3, 12 and 20/28).
Fig 3.
Scores for the first two principal component analysis (PCA) of fecal microbiota in donors at the beginning of the study and patients with irritable bowel syndrome after fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT, n = 13).
Data have been centered within each donor series to remove donor differences for this analysis. Data are shown as donor (D: pink dots), FMT day (T: black dots), visit at week 1 (K1: red dots), visit at week 3 (K2: green dots), visit at week 12 (K3: dark blue dots) and visit at week 20/28 (K4: light blue dots). Each dot represents data from one patient for one visit. The first two PCs account for 27.9% (sum of PC1 and PC2) of the variation. The colored ellipses demonstrate the 68% confidence interval for PC1 and PC2. The PCA scores show that FMT seem to have an effect on the gut microbiota as systematic change is going forward.
Table 2.
Characteristics of the fecal bacterial signals between the donors at the beginning and end of the study, and patients in weeks 0, 1, 3, 12 and 20/28.
The left part of the table shows the bacterial signals given for donors and recipients at different time points before and after FMT and the directionality towards or away from that of the donors at baseline. The right part of the table shows the P-values when comparing the bacterial signals for the recipients at different time points to that for the donors at baseline.
Fig 4.
The characteristic differences of gut microbiota between responders and non-responders groups before and after FMT.
The bacterial signals of (A) Bacteroides, (B) Desulfitispora, (C) Megasphaera/Dialister and (D) Bifidobacteria, in the responders and non-responders groups between the donors at the beginning of the study (before FMT), and between the patients in weeks 0, 1, 3, 12 and 20/28.
Fig 5.
IBS-SSS scores of the patients one week before fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT, week -1), at FMT day (0), and following FMT (weeks 1, 3, 12 and 20/28).
Table 3.
Scores of the patients’ questionnaires before and after fecal microbiota transplantation.
Table 4.
Total score and scores of the six domains of the Irritable Bowel Syndrome-Symptom Questionnaire (IBS-SQ) in patients with IBS before and after fecal microbiota transplantation.