Supported Research

Lay Abstract

A Deep Dive Into Understanding Gut Bacteria in Kidney Disease Background: People with kidney disease have more inflammation compared to the general population. This inflammation can show up in many ways, such as making gut health worse by damaging the good bacteria that live there. The gut, or digestive tract, has billions of good bacteria which help with digestion, and they also help to maintain normal metabolism. When these good bacteria become outnumbered by bad bacteria, which can make their kidney disease worse. Purpose: We can help protect the good bacteria in the gut for people with kidney disease (not on dialysis) through better understanding of the processes involved. To do just that, we plan to study stool samples from people who are well-nourished and compare them to those people who are well-nourished. In people who are not well-nourished, we will check for changes in types of bacteria after treatment with nutritional supplements (Ensure or Boost, for example). We believe that if these people had better nutrition, they might have better gut health, and this may translate to better overall health. We want to find out how healthy the gut is by finding out what bacteria are present, and measuring “good chemicals” produced by the good bacteria in the gut, as well as measuring the “bad chemicals” made by the bad bacteria in the gut. We also want to find out more about how much fibre and what types of food people with kidney disease are eating, whether on nutritional supplements or not. We will ask people to share with use what they ate in a 24-hour period. They would do this with a food calculation software. These records would help us find out exactly how many grams of different nutrients in the food people are actually eating. We will need to recruit sufficient number of people living with kidney disease and who are interested in participating by giving stool, urine, and blood samples. These people will be asked about their comfort in supplying what they eat each day and sharing the information. We will ask selected dietitians to help collect food records from the study’s participants. Additionally, we will find a way to collect stool samples and store and analyze them. We will collaborate with an individual or company to help us with this. At the same time, we will ensure the privacy of the patient information and ensure participants that all patient information is private, confidential, and used only for our research purposes. Permission to do this study will be granted by the Research and Ethics Board, ensuring that participants are safe. We can only see ourselves moving forward with the support of patient partners because this research is about patients and is being done for patients’ health. Outcomes: We surmise that people living with kidney disease will have more of the good bacteria in their gut as the result of better nutrition than those who are not well-nourished. In that group with poor nutrition, we hypothesize we will see more bad bacteria present . We also believe that those participants who ate higher fibre foods will have better gut health and have more good bacteria in their gut than those people who do not eat sufficient fibre in their diet. Relevance to Patients: If we can better understand how to achieve better nutrition for those with kidney disease, we can place more dieticians’ resources for those newly diagnosed with kidney disease. Currently, dieticians are working with more people with severe kidney disease, and therefore, dietitians are less able to see people with the earlier stages of kidney disease in the publicly-funded clinics. We also want to ensure that if dietitians are able to order nutritional supplements for their patients in British Columbia with its universal coverage program already in place, then these supplements are in fact helping patients' digestive health. This study will lay foundation for us to understand how gut health may affect progression of kidney disease and to find out if better nutrition improves gut health and longevity.