A 12-week clinical study is recruiting people with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS) to evaluate if intermittent fasting can improve their immune response, metabolism, and gut microbiome — the bacterial community that inhabits the gastrointestinal tract.
Its findings may also hint at whether such a diet might ease MS symptoms or alter discourse course and, if used in conjunction with other treatments, boost their efficacy.
Conducted by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL), Missouri, the trial is supported by their findings in an earlier mouse study.
Results showed that fasting worked to ease MS-like symptoms in a mouse model of the disease, the research team reported. Specifically, EAE mice fed every other day were less prone to symptoms that included difficulty in walking, limb weakness, and paralysis than mice allowed to eat freely.
This study, “Intermittent Fasting Confers Protection in CNS Autoimmunity by Altering the Gut Microbiota” was published in the journal Cell Metabolism in May.
A fasting diet also enriched bacterial diversity in the mice guts, and shifted immune cell populations there toward a lower inflammatory response. When gut bacteria were transferred from fasting mice to nonfasting mice, the later also were seen to be better protected against MS-like movement problems, supporting the influence of the gut microbiome on MS symptoms.
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