Case Report
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. May 21, 2017; 23(19): 3565-3568
Published online May 21, 2017. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v23.i19.3565
Fecal microbiota transplantation cured epilepsy in a case with Crohn’s disease: The first report
Zhi He, Bo-Ta Cui, Ting Zhang, Pan Li, Chu-Yan Long, Guo-Zhong Ji, Fa-Ming Zhang
Zhi He, Bo-Ta Cui, Ting Zhang, Pan Li, Chu-Yan Long, Guo-Zhong Ji, Fa-Ming Zhang, Medical Center for Digestive Diseases, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing 210011, Jiangsu Province, China
Zhi He, Bo-Ta Cui, Ting Zhang, Pan Li, Chu-Yan Long, Guo-Zhong Ji, Fa-Ming Zhang, Key Lab of Holistic Integrative Enterology, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing 210011, Jiangsu Province, China
Author contributions: He Z wrote the paper; Cui BT and Zhang T joined the clinical work; Li P performed the lab work; Long CY collected the clinical data; Ji GZ was the attending doctor of this group; Zhang FM designed and organized the study and edited the paper.
Supported by The Public Donated Grant “Intestine Initiative” National Nature Science Foundation of China, No. 81670495.
Institutional review board statement: The case report was reviewed and approved by the Second Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University Institutional Review Board.
Informed consent statement: The patient involved in this study gave written informed consent authorizing use and disclosure of his protected health information.
Conflict-of-interest statement: Zhang FM is a core inventor of the GenFMTer. The other authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose. This case was orally presented by Zhang FM in the 3rd China Holistic Integrative Enterology Conference at May 8, 2016.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Fa-Ming Zhang, MD, PhD, Medical Center for Digestive Diseases, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, 121 Jiang Jiayuan, Nanjing 210011, Jiangsu Province, China. fzhang@njmu.edu.cn
Telephone: +86-25-58509883 Fax: + 86-25-58509931
Received: January 23, 2017
Peer-review started: January 27, 2017
First decision: February 23, 2017
Revised: March 9, 2017
Accepted: April 12, 2017
Article in press: April 12, 2017
Published online: May 21, 2017
Abstract

Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) is a promising strategy that involves reconstruction of gut microbiota. Recently, it has been considered as a treatment of Crohn’s disease (CD) and certain neurological diseases. Here, to the best of our knowledge, we report the first case that used FMT to achieve remission of intestinal and neurological symptoms in a girl with CD and a 17-year history of epilepsy. During the 20 mo of follow-up, FMT has proved its efficacy in preventing relapse of seizures after withdrawing the antiepileptic drugs. Furthermore, this finding highlights the role of microbiota-gut-brain axis and inspires a novel treatment for epilepsy through remodeling gut microbiota.

Keywords: Fecal microbiota transplantation, Epilepsy, Crohn’s disease, Gut microbiota, Brain-gut axis

Core tip: We report a case of 17-year history of epilepsy which fortunately showed improvement as a result of fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) treatment for Crohn’s disease. This is the first report that FMT has been used in epilepsy treatment to our knowledge. This case might open a new window into disease mechanism focusing on the microbiota-gut-brain axis and inspire a novel treatment for epilepsy through remodeling of gut microbiota.