Abstract
Background
Methanogens are associated with gut dysmotility in animal models but have not been robustly studied in humans. The WMC assesses regional transit (TT) and pH in the GI tract.
Aims
To study the segmental TT and pH among patients with SIBO or IMO utilizing WMC.
Methods
We conducted a retrospective study of 207 patients who underwent a glucose or lactulose BT and WMC from 2010–2022. Diagnosis of SIBO and IMO were based on the 2017 North American consensus criteria. TT and pH were extracted from WMC recordings. We tested for differences in means of continuous variables and frequencies of categorical variables using two-sample t-tests, Chi-square, and Fisher exact tests. We used R version 3.3.1 (2016-06-21) for all statistical analyses.
Results
A total of 196 patients met criteria, mean age 47.4 years, 155 (79.1%) females. Of the 86 (43.9%) patients with SIBO, 42 (58.3%) had only IMO and 30 (34.9%) met both hydrogen and methane criteria for SIBO. Small bowel TT was longer in patients with IMO compared to negative patients (5h:49min vs 4hr:49min, p = 0.029). Colonic TT was longer in patients with SIBO compared to negative patients (48h:32min vs 39h:25min, p = 0.050). There were no significant differences in segmental pH compared to negative patients.
Conclusions
To our knowledge, this is the largest study of patients who have undergone BT and WMC. SIBO was associated with delayed CTT and IMO with delayed SBTT, but neither with pH. Future investigation is needed to elucidate whether changes in intestinal microbiota affect gut transit.