Author'S Reply: Fecal Microbiota Transplantation For Chronic Pouchitis: Promising Novel Therapeutic Or Lost Cause?

To the Editor: We read with great interest the comments by Rahul S. Dalal and Jessica R. Allegretti on our randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial about fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) for chronic pouchitis in the current issue of Inflammatory Bowel Diseases. In their comments, Dalal and Allegretti highlighted the success of FMT in the treatment of chronic pouchitis obtained in case series. In our trial, we did not find FMT to be effective in the treatment of chronic pouchitis by administering FMT via pouchoscopy and repeated administration after 4 weeks via transanal catheter. We would like to highlight that our trial is the first randomized, placebo-controlled FMT trial in the treatment of chronic pouchitis. It is not uncommon that randomized trials cannot replicate promising results seen previously in case reports. It is noteworthy that in our trial, 5 out of 13 patients in the placebo group remained in remission during the...