According to the study's authors, Rebyota’s clinical efficacy correlated with increases in the relative abundance of Bacteroidia and Clostridia, 2 bacterial classes associated with a healthy microbiome.
“Really the key takeaways that we saw were significant decreases from before to after treatment. And those ARG's included extended-spectrum beta-lactamases, fluoroquinolone resistance—even colistin resistance we found in patients was decreased from before to after treatment. And all of those decreases tended to be significantly more in Rebyota treated compared to placebo treated patients,” explains lead study author Ken Blount, PhD, chief scientific officer for Rebiotix, and Ferring vice president, Microbiome Research.
Blount believes their might be future potential clinical applications for microbiome-based therapies.
“Antibiotics have been tremendous; they've been incredibly powerful, but we now recognize they can have side effects that involve dysbiosis in the gut, and can involve building up and harboring resistance,” Blount said. “So thinking about that and the way you consider antibiotics, and moving forward to think about nontraditional antibiotic options like the microbiome to address infectious diseases. I think that's where we're really hoping the community's mindset continues to shift over the years.”
