Funding outcome

Preterm infants are at risk of short bowel syndrome (SBS) where the gut is unable to absorb the nutrition they need for survival and growth. These infants must receive intravenous or parenteral nutrition (PN) to survive. Many of the infants require PN a very long time before their gut can grow and change enough to absorb the nutrition needed to stop PN. Needing PN is a huge burden for children and their families, often complicated by severe infections and risk of death in early childhood. SBS that starts from birth is the main cause of intestinal transplantation in Canada. We use piglets to test new treatments for the infants and to make sure they are safe. In piglets we have been studying gut hormone treatments that can stimulate the intestine to grow in SBS. These expensive treatments don't seem to stop most children with SBS from needing PN. We know that infants with SBS have changes in the bacteria living in their intestine that impairs their gut health. Our piglets with SBS show the same changes. In both infants and piglets with SBS, abnormal gut bacteria contribute to increased infections that negatively impact the growth of the intestine necessary to stop PN. We believe the intestinal bacteria of infants and piglets with SBS can be modified by the hormone treatments and, in turn, that gut bacteria can have actions that will change how well the hormones work. This idea has not been studied before and is important because we have ways to alter gut bacteria by giving probiotic bacteria or using antibiotics. Combining hormone treatments with probiotics could be a simple way to improve how the gut hormone treatments can help babies with SBS stop PN.