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Oct. 16, 2006 -- Ten days' treatment with the antibiotic Xifaxan reduces symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), a small clinical trial suggests.
IBS is a condition of the intestinal tract that causes symptoms of bloating, gas, abdominal cramping, diarrheadiarrhea, and constipationconstipation.
Xifaxan, now approved for the treatment of travelers' diarrhea, kills bacteria living in the gut. Experts disagree over the cause of IBS. Some suspect the root cause to be overgrowth of gut bacteria.
One of these experts is Mark Pimentel, MD, director of the gastrointestinal motility program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. In prior studies, Pimentel used breath tests to show that about 80% of IBS patients may have serious bacterial fermentation going on in their gut.
This led him to wonder what would happen if he used a powerful antibiotic to shift the balance between overgrowth of these theoretically harmful bacteria and normal bacteria living in the gut.
So Pimentel and colleagues gave a 10-day course of Xifaxan or inactive placebo to 87 IBS patients. Seventy-two patients finished the study. As is common in IBS studies, those who got placebo felt a bit better. Those who got Xifaxan reported even more improvement -- especially less bloating.
"Xifaxan was superior to placebo for control of IBS," Pimentel tells WebMD. "It suggests we are finally tackling a sustainable cause of IBS. If it is bacteria, we have changed the environment so that IBS is better on a semipermanent basis."
The study, funded by Xifaxan maker Salix Pharmaceuticals, appears in the Oct. 17 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. Pimentel is a consultant to Salix and has received speaking fees from the company. Cedars-Sinai Medical Center has a licensing agreement with Salix.
Change of IBS Treatment?
Is Xifaxan a new treatment for IBS? Not yet. A larger study, looking at IBS patients treated by their own doctors with Xifaxan, is already underway. Until those results are known, Xifaxan is not an officially approved treatment for IBS.
But Pimentel says he's treated "thousands" of IBS patients with Xifaxan -- and he says now the word is getting out.
"The gem here is you have a sustained effect in IBS. The larger, longer studies will show how well this works," he says. "We've reported these results at professional meetings, and it has changed the way IBS is treated. Sixty percent of gastroenterologists in the country are starting to do it this way."
Pimentel says the average patient needs re-treatment every two or three months, but that response varies greatly from patient to patient.