Vaios Svolos a PhD student funded by Yorkhill Children’s Charity and work supported funding from the Catherine McEwan Foundation is looking at diet in the treatment of Crohn’s disease. He has been awarded the Best Investigator-Initiated Study Abstract Award 2016 at the 2016 European Crohn’s & Colitis Organisation (ECCO) meeting in Amsterdam. The ECCO meeting is the biggest meeting in the world solely devoted to IBD. His presentation “Crohn’s Disease-TReatment-with-EATing” diet (CD-TREAT diet) and exclusive “enteral nutrition on healthy gut bacteria metabolism” will be heard by an estimated 5000 people when he gives it in March. It was selected as the winner out of nearly 200 abstracts entered.
Vaios said, “In the study we gave the liquid diet normally used to treat Crohns disease to healthy adult volunteers. Then after a period of normal diet gave them our newly designed “CD treat diet” which looks like it had exactly the same impact as the liquid diet. We will shortly be running more detailed scientific analysis of the samples taken during the study before we then plan to then use the diet in patients with Crohn’s disease. Patients have told us they would prefer to have a solid rather than a liquid only diet to treat their Crohn’s disease so that’s what we are trying to do!”
This exciting ground breaking research is leading the way in IBD and it is with the combined support of the Yorkhill Children’s Charity and the Catherine McEwan Foundation that this has been possible.