PRIMA Transfer of intestinal transit time by FMT

Intestinal transit time (TT) varies considerably between healthy individuals and affects gut microbiota composition and activity. Whether differences in the gut microbiota composition also affect the TT is not well elucidated. In this study, we conducted two animal experiments to explore the interaction between the gut microbiota and TT. In the first experiment, we transplanted two groups of germ-free (GF) mice with fecal material from two healthy human donors with fast and slow TT phenotypes. In the second experiment, we transplanted two groups of GF mice with cecal material from two different mouse donor groups treated with the TT-increasing drug loperamide or a saline vehicle. Following transplantation with human feces, we observed a decrease in TT for both groups of GF recipient mice, supporting previous findings that the presence of a gut microbiota reduces TT. However, no differences between the recipient groups were observed after fecal or cecal transplantation. These findings indicate that either the transfer or gut microbiota was inadequate, or that gut microbiota composition is not the primary driving factor for inter-individual TT variation.