Holen & Jonsson (2004) found that dietary nucleotides had beneficial effects, especially when the nutrition supply was inadequate. Work with infants has shown that the incidence and duration of acute diarrhoea is lower in infants when dietary nucleotides are included in their diets (Gil, 2002). Research has shown the benefits of dietary nucleotides in a variety of ways, and it would be expected that people with Irritable Bowel Syndrome may benefit from nucleotide supplementation.

The chronic illness research team from the University of East London (Professor Dancey & colleagues) carried out a double blind randomised placebo controlled study to determine whether there were any benefits of nucleotide supplement on some of the common symptoms of IBS. Symptoms which bother participants the most are pain, diarrhoea, and urgency to have a bowel movement.

Seven symptoms of IBS were analysed by the participants, who rated symptoms every day on a scale of 1 (“no discomfort at all today”) to 7 (“very severe discomfort today”). All participants completed daily diaries throughout the trial. After an initial 4 weeks baseline, they were allotted to condition A or condition B. The capsules were taken three times a day with meals.

Psychological measures were taken at the beginning of the baseline period, the end of the experimental condition and the end of the placebo condition. Depression was measured by the CES-D, suitable for non clinical sample, and Anxiety measured by State-Trait. These are commonly used anxiety scales.

The drop-out rate for the trial was low. Participants dropped out for reasons other than adverse reactions to the intervention; in fact the placebo group had a higher drop out rate than the intervention groups.

Although there was a lot of variability with the daily scoring, it was clearly observed that symptoms were lower for all symptoms in the nucleotide supplement compared with the placebo.

During the baseline period subjects symptom severity went up and down, but clearly during both the placebo and with nucleotide supplement severity of symptoms improved. This improvement was more pronounced in the nucleotide supplement group and also the improvement continued and grew over time. In other words, the longer they took the nucleotide supplement the better they felt overall.

The strongest and most significant effects were observed for abdominal pain, urgency, incomplete evacuation and diarrhoea.

Repeated measures analyses of variance were carried out for each symptom separately; this involved finding the mean of baseline measures, placebo and nucleotide supplement conditions. Compared to both baseline and placebo conditions, the above symptoms are improved under the experimental condition (p

Page 2 of 2 :: First | Last :: Prev | 1 2 | Next