A recent study found that high levels of a common fungus in the gut could signal whether a microbe-based treatment would be successful for people with ulcerative colitis. Changes or disruptions in the gut’s microbiome—the community of bacteria, viruses, and fungi that naturally inhabit the intestines—have been implicated in inflammatory bowel diseases like ulcerative colitis. One treatment that researchers are investigating is fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT), whereby a sample containing gut microbes from a healthy donor is introduced into a person with colitis to help reestablish a more functional gut microbiome. While FMT has proven to be a successful therapy for people with Clostridioides difficile (C. diff) bacterial infections, with over 90 percent of people cured after a single treatment, FMT is less successful for people with ulcerative colitis: in a recent clinical trial, less than half the participants with colitis experienced remission after FMT. Knowing why the treatment works only in some people is important, because it would allow health care providers to predict which individuals with ulcerative colitis would benefit from FMT as opposed to another treatment strategy. One possibility is that FMT’s success may be dependent upon the makeup of the recipient’s microbiome. For example, FMT is less likely to succeed as a C. diff treatment for people who have high levels of Candida, a type of fungus found in the guts of nearly everyone. To read more, click here.