Fecal Microbiota Transplantation for Symptom Improvement in Patients With Irritable Bowel Syndrome: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials.

Fecal microbiota transplantation shows potential to improve irritable bowel syndrome symptoms, with significant effects observed in some analyses but overall very low certainty evidence.

• Why it matters: IBS is a common condition with limited effective treatments, and understanding whether FMT can provide symptom relief could offer a new therapeutic option.
• What they did: Thirteen randomized controlled trials involving 693 patients were analyzed, assessing symptom improvement between 4 and 24 weeks post-FMT using risk ratios and subgroup analyses.
• The result: While the overall evidence is very uncertain, FMT demonstrated some benefit in per-protocol and specific subgroup analyses, suggesting cautious optimism for its role in IBS management.