Antibiotics for the Treatment of Ulcerative Colitis
Status:
Completed
Trial end date:
2008-12-01
Target enrollment:
Participant gender:
Summary
Ulcerative colitis (UC) is an acute and chronic inflammatory bowel disease, whose cause is
unknown. However, it is widely accepted that bacteria living in the large bowel are essential
for the development of the disease. Intuitively, therefore, a logical approach to treatment
would be to use antibiotics. However, antimicrobial chemotherapy has been unsuccessful in
managing acute colitis, and has had only limited benefit in long-term treatment. The failure
of antibiotics in UC arises from the fact that no-one has tried to identify which bacteria
are involved in causing disease, and equally importantly, nobody has targeted appropriate
antibiotics to knock out the specific bacteria in question, in a systematic way. Despite
this, increasing evidence implicates bacteria living on the lining of the bowel being
involved in UC. Our aim, therefore is to identify bacteria colonizing the mucosal surface in
the lower large intestine and to determine the antibiotic sensitivities of those the
investigators believe to be particularly involved in the disease, such as enterococcit,
peptostreptococci and enterobacteria. Because the investigators have already studied
resistance to antimicrobial in many mucosal isolate, the investigators plan ot focus on using
a combination of two antibiotics in this work. A controlled trial will test the benefit of
using these antibiotics over a period of one month and then the patients will be followed up
over a six month period. The investigators will be looking for significant long-term
improvements, and a reduction in drug use following antibiotic therapy.